Speaker 1: Hey, and welcome to what Future.
Speaker 2: I'm your host, Joshua Tapolski, and we have a Crackerjack
Speaker 2: of a show. Do people still say that Crackerjack? Does
Speaker 2: that even exist anymore?
Speaker 1: Do you know?
Speaker 2: Crackerjack's there like a candy, It's like a box. It's
Speaker 2: a candy. It's a candy corn. No, no, candy. Corn
Speaker 2: is a candy. It's like caramel corn or caramel corn
Speaker 2: depending on who you talk to, which I guess is
Speaker 2: corn covered in a sugary coating. And then in the
Speaker 2: box it was like a red stripe box. Does this
Speaker 2: even Does anybody know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 1: Lyra or Jenna? Do you know what I'm talking about?
Speaker 3: Of course I know what Crackerjack.
Speaker 1: You know what Crackerjack is? Okay?
Speaker 3: And I had a prize in the box, and.
Speaker 2: At the bottom of the fucking box there'd be a prize,
Speaker 2: like a toy or something.
Speaker 1: That's great. They don't do that anymore. They don't do it.
Speaker 1: Maybe they do.
Speaker 2: They probably still sell it. It's probably very readily available.
Speaker 2: It's probably one of the best selling products at grocery stores.
Speaker 3: Heay, cracker Barrel, I bet you.
Speaker 2: Cracker Barrel is a right wing establishment dedicated to the
Speaker 2: suppression and oppression of many groups, and I can't stand
Speaker 2: I won't stand for it. Although they do have really
Speaker 2: good biscuits in my recollection.
Speaker 3: But I would bet you good money that they sell
Speaker 3: cracker jacks in the.
Speaker 1: General store, crackerjack at the cracker barrel.
Speaker 2: Probably you're probably right, An, Yeah, we have a crackerjack
Speaker 2: show for you. We've got a wonderful man, Max Read,
Speaker 2: a writer, an editor, a screenwriter, and also a friend,
Speaker 2: I should say, a buddy, and he's got a great
Speaker 2: newsletter called Read Max that I love. And we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about all sorts of stuff. I don't want
Speaker 2: to waste one minute, so let's get into this conversation.
Speaker 2: You were editor in chief of Gawker when it was
Speaker 2: suit out of existence?
Speaker 1: Is that right?
Speaker 4: The lawsuit was ongoing when I was editor. I left
Speaker 4: in twenty fifteen. The following year spring, I want to
Speaker 4: say the following year was when the judgment came down
Speaker 4: and Gocker declared bankruptcy.
Speaker 1: Who was the editor of Gawker at that time.
Speaker 4: I think Alex Parene was the editor in chief. I thought, wow, yeah,
Speaker 4: the last and final Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, not the last and final of that Goker. There
Speaker 2: were many other erbitions of Cocker.
Speaker 4: They just transitioned. They became h what was it called.
Speaker 1: Splinter, splinter, splinder splinter, but splinter was Splinter was owned
Speaker 1: by that was? When? Was it owned by Fusion? Is
Speaker 1: that was it?
Speaker 3: Ye?
Speaker 2: Fusion became I'm sorry, this is crazy shit to think about,
Speaker 2: but like I know, Fusion was a thing that was
Speaker 2: that existed. It was a new media startup. Correct me
Speaker 2: if I'm wrong.
Speaker 4: It was It was new media within Telemundo.
Speaker 2: It was like Telemundo Star new Yes, start up, tell them.
Speaker 2: Telemundo started a thing called Fusion dot net, which was
Speaker 2: a a diverse millennial news operation, right that was sort
Speaker 2: of like the overarching which like from like I get it,
Speaker 2: like very of the moment, like very like Mashable, like
Speaker 2: in the spectrum of like a Mashable and uh yeah,
Speaker 2: I mean who else who else would it have been?
Speaker 2: I guess BuzzFeed News, Mike whatever, This is not Mike, Yeah,
Speaker 2: Mike's other perfect example. Actually, I would say in a
Speaker 2: way Fusion was like a mic competitor. Probably is the
Speaker 2: most most accurate. Anyhow, Sorry, this is not we don't
Speaker 2: have to talk about this at all. In fact, I wasn't really
Speaker 2: planning on talking about it, but although I do want
Speaker 2: to talk about media because you are a member of
Speaker 2: the media elite as we know, I don't know what
Speaker 2: what is the word for a person who just has
Speaker 2: a newsletter?
Speaker 1: What do you call that?
Speaker 4: I call myself an owner operator, a small business, small
Speaker 4: business owner.
Speaker 1: You're a small business owner.
Speaker 2: Okay, so you get some some of Biden's tax break,
Speaker 2: tax breaks for the one percent, for the elite. So
Speaker 2: you're in the media, right, you'd say you're in the media,
Speaker 2: like you continue you continue to publish content that is
Speaker 2: in the sphere of news media.
Speaker 4: Would you say, yeah, I mean, I I write twice
Speaker 4: a week on my substack, do some freelance journalism still too.
Speaker 4: I mean, it's funny the fact that you sort of
Speaker 4: we sort of started talking about this and then immediately
Speaker 4: started remembering some websites. It's very hard. I started my
Speaker 4: substack not really intending to write very much about media.
Speaker 4: But if you have been in the business for long enough,
Speaker 4: and especially if you lived through the period that we're
Speaker 4: talking about, the twenty tens, the crazy twenty tens, it's
Speaker 4: hard not to just keep writing about it. Because it
Speaker 4: still sticks in your mind. I don't want to say trauma,
Speaker 4: but you know it's.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, it's trauma. It's Trauma's the right word.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I think the word trauma's overused, and I don't want
Speaker 2: to say that people who use it don't have trauma.
Speaker 2: But I do feel like people say trauma about things
Speaker 2: that are like they like, you know, I don't know,
Speaker 2: they've got they couldn't find a pair of shoes that fit,
Speaker 2: and they're like, I have trauma from that. I'm like,
Speaker 2: I don't think that's what the word means. Like, I
Speaker 2: feel like it might get a little overused. But because
Speaker 2: I had a call earlier today, I was talking to
Speaker 2: a reporter and we got into a conversation about the Messenger, Yeah,
Speaker 2: which is a the messenger is like so you actually,
Speaker 2: I said the boom period when you're talking about what
Speaker 2: you're talking about fusion and stuff, but actually what fusion
Speaker 2: is in that era, which is like ten late twenty tens.
Speaker 2: I want to say, like, right, I don't know when
Speaker 2: fusion started or that, like what the but I want
Speaker 2: to say, like twenty ten, that's probably later than twenty ten, fourteen,
Speaker 2: around thirteen fourteen. It's actually the beginning of the end
Speaker 2: for the new media boom. It's like Vice had matured
Speaker 2: into this monolithic thing, and BuzzFeed news was at least
Speaker 2: rolling probably pretty successful at that point. It was sort
Speaker 2: of like the beginning of the end for like the
Speaker 2: boom era of like blogging, which would have been which
Speaker 2: would have been in the you know, two thousand and
Speaker 2: four to two. I mean, obviously stuff happened aslet's say
Speaker 2: two thousand and four to two thousand and ten something
Speaker 2: like that is like, yeah, the biggest like boom for
Speaker 2: like blogging, blogging, not like corporate owned blogging.
Speaker 4: Well, there was, I mean, the way I think about
Speaker 4: it is always like there was that early period was
Speaker 4: very people would still go to websites. You know, you
Speaker 4: would actually go to ngadget dot com or goal dot
Speaker 4: com and you you would refresh it to see the feed.
Speaker 4: And then it was sort of SEO came along and
Speaker 4: it allowed you to maintain a relatively similar format. But
Speaker 4: the thing that really sort of turned like the when
Speaker 4: Facebook arrived as like the thing that would give you
Speaker 4: traffic around twenty twelve, and all of a sudden, everything
Speaker 4: you wrote didn't matter what your website looked like, didn't
Speaker 4: matter what your website was. Everything you wrote had to
Speaker 4: sound like it could be shared on a social feed
Speaker 4: or whatever.
Speaker 1: That's right.
Speaker 4: And that's when Fusion and all these that's when all
Speaker 4: the VC money started really coming in and the big
Speaker 4: corporate money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a very dark period. I mean, I'm just trying
Speaker 2: to think. I'm trying to think of it in personal
Speaker 2: terms only because that's easier for me. My memory is
Speaker 2: very bad, and so I have to go like, well,
Speaker 2: what was I doing? What was I doing at that point?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: So, like, yeah, Gadget Crew left to start the Verge
Speaker 2: in like twenty ten, I think maybe to early twenty eleven.
Speaker 2: We launched the Verge in November of twenty eleven. I'm
Speaker 2: pretty sure that sounds wrong, but I think it's actually
Speaker 2: right anyhow, whatever, But that that to me is like
Speaker 2: sort of the bit that's about when you used to
Speaker 2: kickoff of the ends. It's not to be, not to
Speaker 2: be you know, self centric or whatever. But like, I
Speaker 2: think we were legitimately doing the blogging thing where we're like,
Speaker 2: we're going to take our team and go do a thing.
Speaker 2: And we went to a company that wasn't it was
Speaker 2: VC back but it wasn't like it was an NBC
Speaker 2: or whatever. It wasn't like Telemundo wasn't wasn't backing it
Speaker 2: or whatever you're writing. You have a sub stack? Am
Speaker 2: I allowed to say that?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: A lot of times on the Internet somebody says substack.
Speaker 2: That might put an asterisk in between the S and
Speaker 2: the B because they don't know if Elon Musk is
Speaker 2: going to block.
Speaker 4: It for auditor. Yeah, well, just don't put it in
Speaker 4: the title of this of this podcast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, let's talk. We're gonna have to end.
Speaker 2: As a note for Lyra and Jenna, please let's make
Speaker 2: sure we don't add the word substack fully spelled out
Speaker 2: in the title.
Speaker 1: But you have a sub stack, which is a.
Speaker 2: Is a company that has created a platform for people
Speaker 2: to publish newsletters which look a lot like blog posts. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it just sought me at any point where if you
Speaker 2: sound like this, if this sounds like this is wrong,
Speaker 2: And also, you can charge people a subscription fee for
Speaker 2: your newsletter and in doing so create a like a
Speaker 2: personal media company, like a single person media brand.
Speaker 1: And that's what you've done.
Speaker 2: Now you have a thing called read Max which I
Speaker 2: have to say, as far as titles goes very unoriginal
Speaker 2: for you, but I guess pretty clever as well. Explain
Speaker 2: to the listener, who I'm sure are all subscribers of
Speaker 2: read Max. By the way I have, I think the
Speaker 2: crossover is extremely high. But just explain to them, like
Speaker 2: what your newsletter does.
Speaker 4: The tagline is that it's a newsletter about the future.
Speaker 1: Really, yeah, is that the tagline? Yeah? It is? Wow?
Speaker 4: Okay interesting, you know I started it. It's funny. I
Speaker 4: was thinking about this the other day. I started it
Speaker 4: with this, with the sort of manifesto post that people
Speaker 4: can still go back and look at where I said.
Speaker 4: I wanted to write a lot about the way life
Speaker 4: in the twenty percentury had been shaped by the mega
Speaker 4: platforms of the Internet, the way that not just sort
Speaker 4: of economics but also culture and social formations get worked
Speaker 4: through your facebooks and your Instagrams and your tiktoks. But
Speaker 4: as it happens, you know, my editorial philosophy has all
Speaker 4: the sort of been that readers like to feel passion
Speaker 4: and joy. I sound like I'm giving like an upfront's
Speaker 4: presentation to sell the advertise.
Speaker 1: I love that. I wish you had like a clicker
Speaker 1: and some slides.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, if you really could, you have a big
Speaker 2: like a pie chart with some percentage of readers who
Speaker 2: like the.
Speaker 4: Readers love imagine I'm in like a black turtle.
Speaker 2: There's like, yeah, it's like it's like seventy eight percent
Speaker 2: of readers love to feel passion.
Speaker 1: There's a small sliver that don't like passion anyhow.
Speaker 4: So this is what happens when you spend any time
Speaker 4: in editorial management, as you learn to talk like this.
Speaker 4: That being said, yeah cliched, is it sounds It's like
Speaker 4: not worth me finding something to say about tech every
Speaker 4: week if it means that once a week is going
Speaker 4: to be boring. So in practice, the tagline of newsletter
Speaker 4: is a newsletter about the future. In practice, it's a
Speaker 4: newsletter about things that I think are interesting, which includes AI,
Speaker 4: includes crypto, includes you know, platforms like Facebook, includes media stuff.
Speaker 4: Also includes action movies, sci fi movies. Yes, sort of
Speaker 4: whatever is is interesting me at any given moment. So
Speaker 4: it's hard to give the elevator pitch. But people who
Speaker 4: are on the same wave link that I am, I
Speaker 4: think like it because they because it gives them a
Speaker 4: sort of weekly dose of interesting thinking about, you know,
Speaker 4: whatever is going on in whatever things are interesting me
Speaker 4: at that moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I think the most successful publications, whether
Speaker 2: they're a person doing a newsletter or you know, lots
Speaker 2: of people working on something, tend to be the ones
Speaker 2: that center not around necessarily a very hard line of
Speaker 2: specific topics, but a kind of philosophical through line. And
Speaker 2: I mean, I agree with you, would be boring to
Speaker 2: simply write about like whatever that description is supposed to
Speaker 2: encapsulate or could encapsulate. It probably would be very boring
Speaker 2: every week to hear about that. But you have you
Speaker 2: do go pretty far afield. Yeah, Like I downloaded and
Speaker 2: started watching this film Nemesis the other day, which I
Speaker 2: definitely saw in my youth. I mean, you might have
Speaker 2: written more than one occasion about the movie, but it's
Speaker 2: not a good movie. I mean, to me, just for
Speaker 2: starters time, I want to be very clear, it's not
Speaker 2: like high art or anything. It is like it was
Speaker 2: an early nineties. Yeah, like a cyber science fiction kind
Speaker 2: of movie. It's like it's like there were a lot
Speaker 2: of movies in the early nineties. Another one of them
Speaker 2: is Hardware, which I'm sure you've seen I hope you've seen,
Speaker 2: which originally was rated triple X very like for real,
Speaker 2: like actually it was rated ACTS or triple X is
Speaker 2: whatever they called it when it was you know, like,
Speaker 2: but there's this kind of genre of film people who
Speaker 2: like read Neuromancer and were like, that's cool, But I
Speaker 2: don't really have much of a budget. What could I do?
Speaker 2: Like if I like this like a cyberpunk idea, but
Speaker 2: I don't really have the to go all the way.
Speaker 2: And so Nemesis is what of the because you wrote
Speaker 2: about but you actually did a post. I want to
Speaker 2: say it was like a ranking of the sunglasses from Nemesis,
Speaker 2: the cool sunglasses from Nemesis.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I felt so inspired after seeing that that.
Speaker 2: I was like, I got to watch this movie again,
Speaker 2: and so I h of course I went on the
Speaker 2: Pirate Bay, which is still in existence, even though you
Speaker 2: have to definitely get a computer.
Speaker 1: Virus to access it. You absolutely have.
Speaker 2: To get a computer virus to go to the Pirate
Speaker 2: Bay and downloaded a you know, a HD like Blu
Speaker 2: Ray rip of Nemesis.
Speaker 4: Christine twenty one sixty.
Speaker 1: You know, no, no, no, I can't be.
Speaker 2: I can't be watching Nemesis in some seven twenty shit
Speaker 2: like I need to see I need to see every
Speaker 2: grain of sand in the extremely sandy atmosphere of the
Speaker 2: film anyhow. But so so you're writing about like you
Speaker 2: write about stuff that is definitely not the future. But
Speaker 2: I am curious what is like in your mind? Like
Speaker 2: when you say the future, what are things you've written
Speaker 2: and talked about and are thinking about recently that would
Speaker 2: fall into that category.
Speaker 4: I mean, I'm not any different than anybody else who's
Speaker 4: paying attention right now in thinking that, like AI is,
Speaker 4: the is kind of the thing that we everybody is
Speaker 4: talking about, and therefore becomes interesting just because it is
Speaker 4: a thing that everybody's talking about. You know, I was
Speaker 4: over the last couple of years, I would describe myself
Speaker 4: as a cryptoskeptic, but I still found crypto as a
Speaker 4: kind of like object of interest worth writing about and
Speaker 4: thinking about, both as a reason to criticize it, but
Speaker 4: also you know, the communities that arise around something like crypto,
Speaker 4: the kind of like the art work I suppose, or
Speaker 4: the cultural formation, if you want to call it that,
Speaker 4: I mean, between Nemesis and Bordees. Clearly I have a
Speaker 4: real fascination with bad art at something you're.
Speaker 1: Interesting to me here.
Speaker 2: I've often described the NFT boom as the Olympics of
Speaker 2: bad art, which I would I think it's just like
Speaker 2: an astounding quantity of just like the people competing for
Speaker 2: the top slot and like the bad art. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: mean just some of the worst shit ever put into
Speaker 2: it into humanity.
Speaker 4: I mean, to any terrible. But isn't that But to me,
Speaker 4: that's like it's sort of fascinating, Like there's something fascinating
Speaker 4: about this, like weird grifter culture, like tacky grifter culture
Speaker 4: emerging like billionaires.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what happens when you find out that like something
Speaker 2: that could you could scam people out of money is art,
Speaker 2: and like you can and it's like not art, like
Speaker 2: I had need, I have a Picasso, Right, it's not
Speaker 2: like not that that's a scam. That's a whole different
Speaker 2: type of scam actually, but one that is real. But
Speaker 2: but but yeah, like what it happens. I mean, that's
Speaker 2: an interesting place to explore it, right, Yeah, I hear
Speaker 2: what you're saying, Like and.
Speaker 4: You know, like right now, all of the all of
Speaker 4: that energy, all of that kind of like prenetic like
Speaker 4: what's next, what's big? What's interesting energy is is plunged
Speaker 4: into large language models and the AI scene in general.
Speaker 4: And to me this is even more kind of fruitful
Speaker 4: and interesting than crypto because the technology is much more
Speaker 4: obviously impressive and like has applications you can think of
Speaker 4: with out having to like, you know, get a lobotomy
Speaker 4: and start talking like Mark andrieson or what.
Speaker 2: About slurp juice to understand like what AI could do
Speaker 2: for you?
Speaker 4: Yeah, and you know it Also it's interesting to me
Speaker 4: because for the obvious reason that, like, as a writer,
Speaker 4: like this is this is technology that is directly overlaps
Speaker 4: with what I am trained to and paid to do,
Speaker 4: you know, and I try to be in general, my
Speaker 4: approach to this stuff is to try and figure out
Speaker 4: what excites like what excites what excites other people about
Speaker 4: something that doesn't necessarily excite me, or like what is
Speaker 4: what do people find so captivating about it. It's a
Speaker 4: little easier to do that because, like I said, it's
Speaker 4: sort of obviously impressive, and I try to approach it
Speaker 4: not from like a purely critical, purely kind of negative standpoint.
Speaker 4: Even if I think, you know, Sam Altman is not
Speaker 4: a great guy or somebody who's got my best interests
Speaker 4: in mind.
Speaker 1: Frankly, they ever are a great guy? Are they know?
Speaker 2: Was the last time there was like a huge new
Speaker 2: technology started by somebody that you're like, that is a
Speaker 2: freat person.
Speaker 1: I really like him. They seem cool.
Speaker 2: I mean it is unusual, right, yeah. I mean people
Speaker 2: used to love like Steve Jobs, but even Steve Jobs
Speaker 2: and not upon further reflection, by the way, always seemed
Speaker 2: like kind of not a great guy, like he was
Speaker 2: sort of a dick.
Speaker 4: I mean, you must remember, I feel like it was.
Speaker 4: It's just a different cultural difference between like the nineties
Speaker 4: and two thousands is now as people used to sort
Speaker 4: of laugh about Steve Jobs as an abuse of boss like,
Speaker 4: which he really obviously was. Every story you'd hear, these
Speaker 4: sort of semi heroic stories about him just completely bitching
Speaker 4: people out, screening at them whatever, like in the in
Speaker 4: the mac Press, in MacAddict or whatever. It was also
Speaker 4: treated as this funny little thing. And now you'd be like,
Speaker 4: if that, if that stuff had come out now, that
Speaker 4: people would have been up in arms. I mean, because
Speaker 4: he sounds like he was an horrible person to work
Speaker 4: for and basically every way.
Speaker 2: You do, yes, and then but also you have to
Speaker 2: wonder what is what could a Steve Jobs level creator exist?
Speaker 2: I mean, this is the ultimate question. If the man
Speaker 2: wasn't allowed to be a complete like rage aholic or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's also right, he also cried. He also cried a lot, right,
Speaker 2: That was the other thing, Like in the in the
Speaker 2: Isaacs in books, they talked about him crying, but which
Speaker 2: I find just like incongruous with him. I mean, it
Speaker 2: makes I can see it, like in my mind's eye.
Speaker 2: I'm like, okay, I get it. But like, imagine being
Speaker 2: in any work scenario. Okay, you're a you're a guy.
Speaker 2: You go into an office, your boss is berating you
Speaker 2: or something, or like, you have to deliver bad news,
Speaker 2: and his reactions he starts crying in the room. Forget
Speaker 2: about forget about abuse for a second. Let's take the
Speaker 2: abuse stuff out of it, just for a moment, just
Speaker 2: put it to the side. I can't think of a
Speaker 2: more uncomfortable situation for a person to be. I mean,
Speaker 2: obviously there are more uncomfortable situations, but very unusual and
Speaker 2: apparently happened on a regular basis that he would break
Speaker 2: down in tears during a meeting or like you did
Speaker 2: an argument or something, which is like, it's just very
Speaker 2: like he had a lot of volid emotions.
Speaker 4: But that's how we got the iPhone from crying lots
Speaker 4: of it.
Speaker 2: Fucking raises the question because you know what happened. I
Speaker 2: guarantee you. I guarantee you. Some people brought him a
Speaker 2: shitty fucking touch screen like the original Android. I mean,
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember how Android phones were,
Speaker 2: the first version of them, they had like the touch
Speaker 2: screen sensitivity was all over the fucking map. They sucked
Speaker 2: to use. Yeah, somebody brought him that shit. Yeah, and
Speaker 2: he had a meltdown on them. He threw the fucking
Speaker 2: phone in the face. He did a David Pogue. He
Speaker 2: chucked the phone directly at their face. Remember when David
Speaker 2: Poke threw a phone at his wife. This is oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: it was sorry, It's just I think about it all
Speaker 2: the time. Whenever I noticed that talk about the iPhone,
Speaker 2: I'd be like, go to Dave. David Pogue throwing an
Speaker 2: iPhone at his wife. Oh also horrible, by the way,
Speaker 2: horrible abusive thing to do. But yeah, Steve Jobs, they
Speaker 2: gave him the shitty touch screen. He threw it at somebody.
Speaker 2: He was like, this is not extentually started crying, I
Speaker 2: assume at some point, and then eventually, out of fear, right,
Speaker 2: they brought him really good touch screen, like just out
Speaker 2: of pure fear. They were like, all right, like we
Speaker 2: have to do this, or like he's gonna be really upset.
Speaker 2: We don't like want to make Steve us. You know,
Speaker 2: would we have gotten the iPhone or would we have
Speaker 2: a would it be a whole different future that we're
Speaker 2: living in right now. Maybe there would be no social
Speaker 2: media because when you think about it, without a great
Speaker 2: touch screen, the iPhone's probably not a successful product. And
Speaker 2: if it's not successful, then the whole social media boom
Speaker 2: and all that shit really doesn't happen.
Speaker 4: Might Yeah, I mean when you put it like that,
Speaker 4: you're not making an argument that it was a good
Speaker 4: thing that any else I'm not sure not if it's
Speaker 4: without bad bosses, we wouldn't have social media. Wouldn't that
Speaker 4: be great?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 4: Better workplaces and no Facebook.
Speaker 2: But I've come full circle. I mean I was when
Speaker 2: I was twelve years old. I got on the Internet
Speaker 2: when I was like twelve, right, and it was early internet.
Speaker 2: But now I'm like, yeah, we got to shut it down, like,
Speaker 2: why did we ever invent any of this stuff? This
Speaker 2: seems bad, like we made a huge mistake.
Speaker 1: Well, it's funny.
Speaker 4: One thing about AI that I noticed is I think
Speaker 4: we've gone from a position I mean the sort of
Speaker 4: capsule history which isn't which is always more complicated than this,
Speaker 4: But the capsule history I think that people tell about themselves,
Speaker 4: journalists tell about themselves and the tech boom is that
Speaker 4: we were all a little bit who positive towards the
Speaker 4: tech industry, that we were too excited that we gave
Speaker 4: them a pass through the recite.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we're like the touch screen on this iPhones fucking amazingly.
Speaker 2: I mean, as a guy who reviewed most of them,
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my god, the touch screen is
Speaker 2: so good?
Speaker 1: How did they do it? Steve Jobs has done it again?
Speaker 4: And then and then when everything kind of fell apart
Speaker 4: and it became clear how bad for all of us,
Speaker 4: all of this stuff.
Speaker 1: Kind of was.
Speaker 4: You know, everybody hunched over and was like, we can't
Speaker 4: let that happen again. And I think a lot of
Speaker 4: the like media critical reaction to a lot of AI
Speaker 4: stuff is born out of that fear that we're going
Speaker 4: to be too. You know that we that we really
Speaker 4: need to give these products like this and technologies like
Speaker 4: this really rigorous and clear kind of investigations goings over
Speaker 4: like make it make them as good as they possibly can.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: That's obviously you want journalists who are oppositional and aggressive
Speaker 4: and critical in all these ways. But it's like creates
Speaker 4: this very a very funny and different kind of relationship
Speaker 4: with the tech industry than existed in say like two
Speaker 4: thousand and five or two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: Oh no, totally, totally.
Speaker 2: I hear, by the way, the sounds of New York
Speaker 2: in the background there, it's like you gotta sir, and
Speaker 2: I'm just creeping up. So I've been so long since
Speaker 2: I've heard that, now that I live in out the country. No,
Speaker 2: you're right, I mean I think there is probably in
Speaker 2: some way an over adjustment.
Speaker 1: I mean, I actually, and I've probably told the story before.
Speaker 2: But I I had a meeting with actually it was
Speaker 2: a fund I was fundraising for the Outline and we
Speaker 2: met with Mark Andries and it turned into an argument
Speaker 2: between the two of us. It was an interesting meeting
Speaker 2: because there were like seven people there and it just
Speaker 2: ended up with us arguing with each other. But one
Speaker 2: of his arguments about generally about like the tech press,
Speaker 2: I mean, the outline wasn't pure tech, but it was
Speaker 2: like he was like, you guys are of all, you're
Speaker 2: all trashing us, and you're taking shots at us, and
Speaker 2: you're trying to like tear down all the work that
Speaker 2: we're doing. And and I was like, one of my
Speaker 2: things that I remember, and I think maybe struck a
Speaker 2: course with him, I was like, we like actually have
Speaker 2: been like nothing but like wonderful to the tech industry,
Speaker 2: and we expected like that that people in tech to
Speaker 2: be better. Yeah, and you guys have ended up being
Speaker 2: exactly like the fucking robber barons of yester year. Like
Speaker 2: you're supposed to be the next generation of like these
Speaker 2: leaders who do who hold themselves to a higher standard
Speaker 2: or are more aware of what's going on in the
Speaker 2: world and like you know, more sensitive to like the
Speaker 2: users and who they are and what they represent and anyhow.
Speaker 2: But like, I think that's that is they've reacted very
Speaker 2: poorly to getting bad press because they they have gotten
Speaker 2: so much good press, and so there's a hugely defensive stance.
Speaker 4: I also think, I mean, I think that the other
Speaker 4: aspect of this that is is sort of unexpected and
Speaker 4: you wouldn't have been able to predict in two thousand
Speaker 4: and six, is these are like the two main power
Speaker 4: user groups on Twitter. So like suddenly all of the
Speaker 4: media kind of got shuttled through this one single social
Speaker 4: media feed, and it was the same feed that all
Speaker 4: of all of tech was also on, and it just
Speaker 4: was like just sort of a bad neighbors situation. Like
Speaker 4: maybe like all of a sudden, you went from like
Speaker 4: maybe you get the Times delivered and you see a
Speaker 4: negative article, but you also see the positive article, and
Speaker 4: you also get the Journal and there's a bunch of
Speaker 4: different things. Now you're like you see every single even
Speaker 4: the lowest level, you know, copy editors talking shit about
Speaker 4: you or like replying to you and calling you egghead
Speaker 4: or whatever, and you're freaking out, like it's too much
Speaker 4: for you.
Speaker 2: That is mean you should never I don't think I
Speaker 2: don't I think never go after people's looks.
Speaker 1: I think you don't you know what I mean. I
Speaker 1: have always felt this.
Speaker 2: I mean, especially during the Trump years, people would be
Speaker 2: like ooh, the orange whatever. I'm like, that's not productive,
Speaker 2: Like it just isn't like it's not a good.
Speaker 4: Clearly, I mean, it clearly got under marketing well, clearly
Speaker 4: got under a bunch of people's skins, various various people.
Speaker 4: I mean, it doesn't.
Speaker 1: I mean.
Speaker 4: The funny thing is that Andresen then started his own
Speaker 4: publication to much fanfare, called I think called Future.
Speaker 2: He's also he's also very interested in covering the future,
Speaker 2: like what future and.
Speaker 1: Your public is.
Speaker 4: Then they shut it down because because if.
Speaker 2: He wants to read a fucking white paper from a
Speaker 2: sixteen Z or from andres and Horwitz, like nobody wants
Speaker 2: to read, nobody cares, nobody wants to read PR. First off,
Speaker 2: I wish I could tell all the PR people though
Speaker 2: I wish they could learn.
Speaker 4: But I mean, and the other thing is like running
Speaker 4: an actual like publication that publishes with any kind of
Speaker 4: regularity good things that people want to read with any
Speaker 4: kind of regularity is much more difficult than I think
Speaker 4: people appreciate it. I have this thing about I think
Speaker 4: there's something real about the way people, certain kinds of
Speaker 4: people relate to journalists and the media is because of
Speaker 4: what we do is just write and just sort of
Speaker 4: tell people what's happening in the world. There's there's there's
Speaker 4: a sense that like anybody could kind of do it,
Speaker 4: and so there's a there's a there's a resentment from
Speaker 4: people like Intrisan or whomever that that sort of the
Speaker 4: suggestion that, like, you know, I could be doing what
Speaker 4: you're doing, I could do it better. And when you
Speaker 4: actually try to do it, like run the whole thing
Speaker 4: as a business, like like hit everything that you need
Speaker 4: to hit to be a good journalist and a good
Speaker 4: editor and a good publisher, you recognize that, especially in
Speaker 4: the current environment, especially in the environment that people like
Speaker 4: Andresen created, it's a lot of work. It takes a
Speaker 4: lot of work and a lot of like accumulated skill
Speaker 4: and knowledge. It's not something you can just replicate because
Speaker 4: you've decided that today's journalists don't know how to do
Speaker 4: it right or whatever.
Speaker 2: I agree with everything you just said one hundred percent,
Speaker 2: but I will also say we have so devalued what
Speaker 2: looks like.
Speaker 1: Journalism and news.
Speaker 2: It's been so greatly terrifically devalued, and there are so
Speaker 2: many people who truly suck doing it, like really bad.
Speaker 2: There are like bad actors at places like Daily Wire
Speaker 2: or whatever. There are people who are bad at it,
Speaker 2: like that just aren't good at their job because it
Speaker 2: has become probably there was a period where it was
Speaker 2: easier than ever to go, hey, i'm gonna write, I'm
Speaker 2: gonna make content, Like journalism became this thing called content,
Speaker 2: not the journalism with the capital jay that you're probably
Speaker 2: thinking about or we're talking about.
Speaker 1: Really.
Speaker 2: And also it's all free, yeah, right, it's free to everybody,
Speaker 2: and everybody thinks it should be free. And so I
Speaker 2: think it's that combination of like you've got like legitimately
Speaker 2: bad actors, you've got legitimately like kind of people who
Speaker 2: should never have gotten into the craft to begin with.
Speaker 2: Like not to throw it back to the NFT thing,
Speaker 2: but it's a good it's kind of an interesting parallel
Speaker 2: where it's like you really aren't an artist. You didn't like,
Speaker 2: you didn't train, you didn't really want to be an artist,
Speaker 2: you kind of don't care about it that much, but
Speaker 2: like you could get a job doing it right. You
Speaker 2: can get a job like making an NFT and like
Speaker 2: maybe sell some and make a quick buck. I think
Speaker 2: there's a lot of people who kind of found their
Speaker 2: way into like content creation that was like a machine.
Speaker 1: It was like it kind of like, you.
Speaker 2: Know why we're all talking about AI a lot lately
Speaker 2: in this in this venue is like it became a
Speaker 2: very machine almost like a machine generated game, where it's
Speaker 2: like you write a headline that it will get clicks,
Speaker 2: and you put some content in the below it that's
Speaker 2: like feels like enough information to call it a story,
Speaker 2: and that's like what journalism is. There's actually a fair
Speaker 2: argument to say that there is a lot of bad journalism.
Speaker 2: It's just that what they're talking about isn't like is
Speaker 2: it the Daily Wire, and it isn't like the user
Speaker 2: generated content on BuzzFeed dot com. It's people who say
Speaker 2: things that are true that they don't want to hear
Speaker 2: or don't want anybody else to see.
Speaker 1: Basic.
Speaker 4: The other thing I wouldn't want to say is that
Speaker 4: it's not as though. I mean, the thing I still
Speaker 4: love about the Internet is that you can find incredible
Speaker 4: geniuses doing work that would otherwise never have been cover.
Speaker 4: It's not like citizens, I like, do I believe in
Speaker 4: citizen journalism like conceptually Circle twenty twelve, Jeff Jarvis talking
Speaker 4: about like said citizen journalism, No, but do I believe
Speaker 4: that there are like people there are incredibly talented writers, reporters,
Speaker 4: journalists out there who would not have access to audiences
Speaker 4: if it wasn't for the Internet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Absolutely, I mean that those people are those.
Speaker 2: People one hundred percent. I mean, to be clear, we
Speaker 2: would not be having this conversation. I would have done
Speaker 2: nothing if it weren't for the fact. I mean I
Speaker 2: didn't go to as you as I think. You know,
Speaker 2: I barely even went to high school, but I definitely
Speaker 2: didn't go to to college for journalism. Like I didn't
Speaker 2: go to Jay's school and then leave and go intern
Speaker 2: at the New York Times. Like there used to be
Speaker 2: a way that people did this that was very linear, right,
Speaker 2: and it was a very closed circuit.
Speaker 1: For sure.
Speaker 2: The Internet has has I know that everybody talks about
Speaker 2: this is like kind of like bullshit, but I think it,
Speaker 2: I mean, these days, but it had leveled the playing
Speaker 2: field for if a person was eager and excited and good, yeah,
Speaker 2: and had any bit of talent, Like there was a
Speaker 2: place to go and go and do it and find
Speaker 2: like hone it, you know, and like I that's real
Speaker 2: and awesome. Yeah, And a lot of our best journalists,
Speaker 2: a lot of the best journalists working today it came
Speaker 2: from that sort of with those backgrounds, like not from
Speaker 2: straight from Jay school.
Speaker 4: You know, something that I believe, like incredibly strongly, like
Speaker 4: on a political levelist that there's all this incredible, unused,
Speaker 4: untapped talent, creative talent, creative genius intelligence out there in
Speaker 4: the world, in the US but around the world that
Speaker 4: is just ill served by the political economic systems that
Speaker 4: we have working right now. And the Internet at its
Speaker 4: best is a way to level that playing field and
Speaker 4: to like find outlets for those people, find ways for
Speaker 4: them to make use of their incredible genius that otherwise
Speaker 4: would and exist. And then the Internet, it's worse, is
Speaker 4: also like a way for very rich guys to like
Speaker 4: find those talents and then just exploit the hell out
Speaker 4: of the stuff they're creating. I mean, I think this
Speaker 4: about social media for real. It's like, what makes Facebook
Speaker 4: valuable is not the technology, what makes or Twitter or
Speaker 4: any or TikTok or anything. It's the people who are
Speaker 4: creating stuff that is engaging and entertaining and funny and
Speaker 4: weird for free for these social networks.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 4: The drill the drills, Yeah, exactly right, And you know
Speaker 4: this is this is the thing that I think is
Speaker 4: worth thinking about as AI comes into being is the
Speaker 4: sort of sense that, like, you know, what is AI
Speaker 4: going to be used for? Because I think it has
Speaker 4: this possibility to give sort of production tool in the
Speaker 4: same way that you know, like electronic production music production
Speaker 4: tools gave access to all these kids in their bedrooms
Speaker 4: the ability to make beats and to make music and
Speaker 4: to create create stuff themselves without having to you know,
Speaker 4: pay one thousand dollars an hour for a studio or
Speaker 4: whatever and get that stuff together. Like, I see a
Speaker 4: lot of gender to AI that feels like, maybe not
Speaker 4: right now, but pretty soon, this is going to help
Speaker 4: people create things themselves, even if they don't really have
Speaker 4: access to these huge resources outside of it, right, And
Speaker 4: what frustrates me is that it sure seems like the
Speaker 4: business model that places like open ai are gunning for
Speaker 4: is instead of like, let's enable people who otherwise wouldn't
Speaker 4: be able to, you know, do these things, let's let's
Speaker 4: find ways to replace the people who are already doing
Speaker 4: these things with the shittier version that we can have
Speaker 4: the boss's control or whatever.
Speaker 2: Right, there's a lot there that I agree with and
Speaker 2: also to unpack. But I will say that it is
Speaker 2: interesting that. I mean, I don't want to get into
Speaker 2: a you know, capitalism or whatever. Capitalism isn't good or not.
Speaker 2: There's obviously some problems with it, but like there is
Speaker 2: that you know. The history of capitalism is like these
Speaker 2: like incredible innovations that are then like manipulated into like
Speaker 2: a massive business that then like needs a bunch of
Speaker 2: like worker bees to like go and do and it's
Speaker 2: like owned by a very small segment. Like the thing
Speaker 2: itself is owned by a very small segment of the population,
Speaker 2: but the actual work to make the thing is done
Speaker 2: by a much larger segment.
Speaker 1: Of the population.
Speaker 2: And it's usually grueling and shitty, and people are underpaid
Speaker 2: for it. And it's like is and that is like
Speaker 2: in some way, like a Facebook is, like you said,
Speaker 2: like all these people are Facebook or Twitter or whatever.
Speaker 2: Is like these amazing people create for it, like that's
Speaker 2: the engine of it or whatever. But it is, you know,
Speaker 2: over time turned into kind of like a just like
Speaker 2: it's a part of like a machine, Like those people
Speaker 2: are a part of a machine that drives commerce. Right, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that would be fine if the system of
Speaker 2: commerce that it was built on was actually made any
Speaker 2: fucking sense. But the system of commerce is built on
Speaker 2: is based on a mistake, like essentially a mistake about
Speaker 2: the value of people on the Internet. I think there's
Speaker 2: like a foundational fundamental flaw and like how we monetize
Speaker 2: content on the Internet. I've probably put this a million
Speaker 2: times and I don't have to go into my spiel here,
Speaker 2: but like the way that Google came up with monetizing
Speaker 2: search is the way that we basically monetize.
Speaker 1: Everything, and it is it's wrong. It just was wrong.
Speaker 2: It just was like they could do that at the
Speaker 2: time because that was all that was available to them,
Speaker 2: Like they had one notion of like could we make money,
Speaker 2: and like, well, this is a way, like a billboard
Speaker 2: on a road, Like that's one way to make money.
Speaker 2: Like you put a billboard up and some people drive
Speaker 2: past it, and you can sell space on the billboard.
Speaker 2: And sometimes people who drive past it will be like, hey,
Speaker 2: like yeah, I need a new car, Like I should
Speaker 2: go check out the fucking Audi that I you know,
Speaker 2: the sign I drove past. But like, out of the
Speaker 2: people who drive past it, most of them never go
Speaker 2: check out the Audi or whatever. But over time, there's
Speaker 2: some small value that can be extracted from that billboard.
Speaker 2: And that's but that's the entire business model of the Internet,
Speaker 2: is that every single thing on it is like as
Speaker 2: devalued as.
Speaker 1: Like a billboard or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like anyhow, I mean it's not the perfect analogy, but
Speaker 2: you know what I'm saying, So.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't.
Speaker 4: I mean, part of it too, is that it means
Speaker 4: that when you're doing creative work, like you are also
Speaker 4: having to think about how you're like you yourself are also
Speaker 4: a billboard. And so like I like my job, I
Speaker 4: like my life. I like what I do on substeck,
Speaker 4: but like part of what I have to be part
Speaker 4: of what my subtect is and like part of what
Speaker 4: I have to do as a writer who isn't currently
Speaker 4: have W two employment is sort of be my own
Speaker 4: marketing team across a bunch of different platforms so that
Speaker 4: people know they can hire me, people know they can
Speaker 4: find me.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: It's the hustle, yeah, and it's it's not a great
Speaker 4: way to live. And the thing that but the thing
Speaker 4: that really I think is a problem with it is
Speaker 4: that we know, for a fact there are a lot
Speaker 4: of writers who are more talented than me, who are
Speaker 4: better than me at all the things I do. For instance, well,
Speaker 4: who don't want to let's without naming names. I don't
Speaker 4: want to be part of that that hustle who are
Speaker 4: not interested in that. Like, No, I'm talking about the opposite.
Speaker 4: I'm talking about somebody who is not good at this
Speaker 4: kind of this kind of thing, who doesn't want to
Speaker 4: do it. Yes, there's like very few ways for that person. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they're very few ways for that person to be compensated
Speaker 4: for work they do. Whereas you have people who are
Speaker 4: who are incredibly good at the hustle part of it,
Speaker 4: again not naming, incredibly good to the hustle part of it,
Speaker 4: not not particularly intelligent or whatever.
Speaker 1: Writer. I think that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 4: I mean, we can all imagine in our heads somebody
Speaker 4: who fits these gat and say, for exactly, for example,
Speaker 4: they're they're ubiquitous.
Speaker 1: I'm intelligent, but good at the hustle. I'm thinking, actually,
Speaker 1: they shake.
Speaker 4: The right hands, they put themselves in the right names.
Speaker 4: It's one reason why the internet can make you so
Speaker 4: mad when you go online these days, Like the reward
Speaker 4: is market Like you get much better rewarded for marketing
Speaker 4: than you do for quality.
Speaker 2: Right, of course no, yes, I mean and and and
Speaker 2: if you're bad at or don't like or feel like
Speaker 2: you know, some people like if you're from generation acts
Speaker 2: like myself, you're not gen X.
Speaker 1: Are you? You're a millennial?
Speaker 4: No, I'm a millennial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you're if you're like a gen X person,
Speaker 2: you you feel a kind of physical impulse to reject
Speaker 2: self promotion. And now, I don't know, maybe people would
Speaker 2: say that I don't. I haven't jected self promotion. I'm
Speaker 2: not really sure, but I would tell you I would.
Speaker 2: I think if you ask Lyra and Jenn f I
Speaker 2: am promoting this podcast enough, I think that they would
Speaker 2: tell you that.
Speaker 1: I am not. And they wish I was hustling. They
Speaker 1: wish I was hustling more. I don't know. I don't
Speaker 1: want to speak for them.
Speaker 2: All that said, you know, if you even are close
Speaker 2: to making a living at doing what you're doing, it's
Speaker 2: also fucking wild because you know your parents and your
Speaker 2: grandparents and certainly every generation that is, almost every generation
Speaker 2: that's come before us. This abstract thing that we are doing,
Speaker 2: this abstract I mean, it is fucking weird, like it
Speaker 2: is weird, like we are go on to this thing
Speaker 2: the screen, We go into the screen and then we
Speaker 2: do something that frankly we like. Probably for the most part,
Speaker 2: you probably like the writing that you're doing, right, You're
Speaker 2: not like, you don't wake up every day and you're like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I don't know, maybe you got to do
Speaker 2: the hustle, but you don't wake up every.
Speaker 4: I mean some weeks. Some weeks you're like, ah, do
Speaker 4: I really have to do this? But for the most part, yeah,
Speaker 4: it's good, right.
Speaker 2: And I mean, I'm sure there are many struggling YouTubers
Speaker 2: you feel the same way. But like, if you can
Speaker 2: even make if you I'm sorry, if you can even
Speaker 2: make one dime just shooting a video of yourself and
Speaker 2: put it on the internet, Like, it's kind of amazing
Speaker 2: because there was no period in history before this where
Speaker 2: such a thing was possible in really any venue. I mean,
Speaker 2: you couldn't just put a show on and have people
Speaker 2: come to your play or whatever. You couldn't just make
Speaker 2: a movie and put it in a theater. You couldn't
Speaker 2: just like write a newspaper and have it exist in
Speaker 2: front of people. So there is this amazing flip side,
Speaker 2: which is like all of this seems like there's fantasy here.
Speaker 2: Like I think if you were to go back fifty
Speaker 2: years and describe.
Speaker 1: This to somebody, they'd be like, it would just.
Speaker 2: Be sound like such a fantastic story, like such a
Speaker 2: total bit of fantasy. So there's a flip side to
Speaker 2: all of it, which is like, the internet's a sass
Speaker 2: pulling full of horrible people, and the people who own
Speaker 2: and control most parts of the Internet are tyrants who
Speaker 2: are working everybody to the bone and don't give us
Speaker 2: our fair shake. And the model, the monetization model the
Speaker 2: Internet is built on, it's a complete shit show that sucks,
Speaker 2: and it's broken at at its most fun a mental level.
Speaker 2: And yet there are more people creating interesting works of fiction,
Speaker 2: non fiction, art, non art, like journalism, whatever, than we've
Speaker 2: probably ever had in the history of the world. There's
Speaker 2: probably more like journalism being done than ever before. Yeah,
Speaker 2: am I crazy for saying that?
Speaker 4: No? I don't think so. I mean, I think it's
Speaker 4: a it's a I mean for me, the question is,
Speaker 4: how can we have that flowering of creativity and talent
Speaker 4: and intelligence, and how can we you know, like make
Speaker 4: sure that people are reaching their potentials without the layer
Speaker 4: of exploitation that seems that right now seems like integral
Speaker 4: to all this stuff, and I did like to This
Speaker 4: is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately,
Speaker 4: because so I'm in the Writer's Guild, the TV Writers
Speaker 4: Guild and we're on strike right now, or the TV
Speaker 4: and Film Writers Guild and we're on strike right now,
Speaker 4: and something that is a huge contrast between being a journalist,
Speaker 4: where you might have a workplace union but oftentimes in
Speaker 4: general you don't, versus being in a heavily unionized industry
Speaker 4: part of a pretty powerful union is seeing what can happen,
Speaker 4: how much better a job can be. When you have
Speaker 4: that kind of at least, you have a little bit
Speaker 4: of leverage against the exploitation that you're not completely at
Speaker 4: the whims of what the bosses want at any given moment.
Speaker 4: You're not completely like, am I going to have a
Speaker 4: job today? Am I going to have a job tomorrow?
Speaker 4: Am I going to make money from this thing I'm
Speaker 4: working on on? Spec? Am I not going to make
Speaker 4: money from it?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 4: And I think Hollywood is a really interesting example of
Speaker 4: an industry that is a creative industry that produces a
Speaker 4: wide range of things from total shit to like you know,
Speaker 4: instances of surpassing genius that manages nonetheless to like adequately
Speaker 4: up until recently, adequately reward the creative people who work
Speaker 4: on it like and sometimes like more than just rewards,
Speaker 4: sometimes make them extremely rich because they they did a
Speaker 4: really good job at whatever it is you're supposed to
Speaker 4: do it. And I think that like to you know,
Speaker 4: I'm not saying like, I don't know how a content creators.
Speaker 4: I'm not suggesting that content creators unionized, though I would
Speaker 4: love to. I would think it would be great.
Speaker 2: Imagine if like everybody in YouTube unionized, like you.
Speaker 4: Know, there's like the German German vloggers have been trying
Speaker 4: to do this for years now, and in fact, they're
Speaker 4: unionizing under the steel workers union in Germany, I guess
Speaker 4: is extremely powerful. It's maybe the biggest union there, and
Speaker 4: so they've got a special like YouTube content creators organizing
Speaker 4: like group that they're.
Speaker 2: Trying to I like, I really like the idea of
Speaker 2: like steel workers and YouTubers like you know, together, that's
Speaker 2: like very I don't know that sounds.
Speaker 4: Right if I might be remembering this wrong, but I'm
Speaker 4: pretty sure the guy behind it is this German guy
Speaker 4: who does videos of where he like builds his own
Speaker 4: catapults and just like it's the most YouTube thing. But
Speaker 4: also I think I like, right at the intersection of
Speaker 4: like steel workers YouTube and German, it's like the guy.
Speaker 2: It's like the guy who's like, I'm going to build
Speaker 2: a house from like just like this mud plane. I like,
Speaker 2: come here and I'm going to build like a mudhouse
Speaker 2: out of like lumber, I chop down and yeah, something
Speaker 2: like that. So, right, there is this huge strike going
Speaker 2: on right now. Of course, Hollywood is an industry that's
Speaker 2: been around a lot longer than the Internet, right, and
Speaker 2: has has gone through lots of situations where there's tremendous
Speaker 2: abuse of power by the people who are in charge
Speaker 2: of like the studios. I imagine there's still a tremendous
Speaker 2: abuse of power by the people who, yeah, the studios.
Speaker 2: But but yeah, of course people eventually were like, hey,
Speaker 2: we need to unionize. Of course, It's interesting the modern
Speaker 2: narrative about unions is is very confused. I think there's
Speaker 2: so much misinformation about about what unions are and what
Speaker 2: they do that it has really done its job of
Speaker 2: like making a lot of people very skeptical about the
Speaker 2: power of a union.
Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, Hollywood unions all formed in the forties
Speaker 4: and fifties, when union density in the US was like
Speaker 4: three or four times what it is now. When you know,
Speaker 4: it was like pretty common to be in a union.
Speaker 4: There were like institutions that people knew, well, everybody knew
Speaker 4: at least one person or a family member who was
Speaker 4: in a union. So it wasn't crazy to be like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: we're going to form a writer.
Speaker 1: It wasn't a political thing that like, you know, I
Speaker 1: mean there was a wow.
Speaker 4: I mean, it depends on the you depends on the union.
Speaker 4: Like some of those you know, the writers in particular
Speaker 4: were and still are relatively left wing compared to the
Speaker 4: other right.
Speaker 2: But I mean, I mean, Hollywood is generally speaking not
Speaker 2: a I mean, I'm not saying there are no conservatives
Speaker 2: in Hollywood, but it is obviously the owners are all
Speaker 2: probably there's no question, but I mean, generally speaking, people
Speaker 2: in the creative arts tend to be more left leaning,
Speaker 2: more liberal than people in a non creative arts. I think, yeah,
Speaker 2: I think that's fair, and so unsurprisingly that the union
Speaker 2: would be you know, obviously very very liberal or i
Speaker 2: mean socialism, you know, is directly tied to lots of
Speaker 2: unions in their creation, and like the concept of a
Speaker 2: union of itself.
Speaker 4: Is like a very socialistic idea, although you know that
Speaker 4: being said, like if you go and you talk to
Speaker 4: like the camera operators who work shows in New York
Speaker 4: City who are all members of AATSI, and the teamsters
Speaker 4: who are part of the Stage Hands Union, which is
Speaker 4: one of the other big powerful Hollywood unions. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm not saying an even vote for Trump, but you're
Speaker 4: going to talk to guys who are very different set
Speaker 4: set up politics than I sew on union guys, guys
Speaker 4: who are showing us solidarity on the strike. But there's
Speaker 4: like a there is a wide range of political.
Speaker 1: You know, but you see how those cut across.
Speaker 2: There's a very blue collar, white collar interception there where
Speaker 2: you've got like like a camera operation or is a
Speaker 2: vary or like somebody who's doing set design or or
Speaker 2: like literally some of the labor. Like I remember when
Speaker 2: I used to go on on Fallon and like I
Speaker 2: remember once I tried to move a box like we
Speaker 2: were like setting up some like gadget or whatever, and
Speaker 2: they're like, you can't touch that, And I was like Okay,
Speaker 2: there's only the union. People who moved the boxes could
Speaker 2: touch the boxes. Like I it was like literally illegal
Speaker 2: for me to touch the box. But it's very blue
Speaker 2: collar work, you know, it's like not like sitting down
Speaker 2: at your think pad and writing, you know, the next
Speaker 2: episode of Lost.
Speaker 1: It's like.
Speaker 4: One of the things that, I mean, one of the
Speaker 4: things that has been very inspiring and has made me
Speaker 4: feel really optimistic and positive about the strike wear on
Speaker 4: right now is the extent of the solidarity shown by
Speaker 4: the teamsters to the Writer's Guild so that we've managed
Speaker 4: especially it's supposed to work. Yeah, I mean, the idea
Speaker 4: is that everybody that there's a there's solidarity between unions
Speaker 4: because everybody understands the basic dynamic. And that hasn't always
Speaker 4: been the case. You know, the last strike writers went
Speaker 4: on with two thousand and eight. A lot of this
Speaker 4: is sort of like anecdotes, and but people said, you know,
Speaker 4: back then, people didn't think the writers need to go
Speaker 4: on strike. You know, teamsters were worried about missing there hours.
Speaker 4: You know, they're not productions are getting shut down. In
Speaker 4: a lot of cases, they're not getting paid. So they
Speaker 4: would break picket lines, they would they would walk through,
Speaker 4: they would try to keep working, try to get paid,
Speaker 4: and that just has it's been a total change from
Speaker 4: that for this most recent one, which you can attribute
Speaker 4: to a million things, you know, like one of it
Speaker 4: and is just I think, like you were saying, we've
Speaker 4: gone from a real low ebb of unions to like
Speaker 4: the sparks. We're not yet in a place where unions
Speaker 4: are like have the same kind of density that they
Speaker 4: used to, but we've gone from a low ebb to
Speaker 4: there's you know, there's a changes coming, I think, And
Speaker 4: so I think people are more positive in general that
Speaker 4: we're learning more.
Speaker 1: I agree.
Speaker 2: I think people maybe are starting to realize and maybe
Speaker 2: the internet is we can thank the internet for some
Speaker 2: of this, just of being able to visualize what happens
Speaker 2: in non union environments and like going, hey, wait a second, like, yeah,
Speaker 2: it makes sense that we have some leverage because if
Speaker 2: you're not in a union, your leverage is basically niil
Speaker 2: with the business. And by the way, have you been picketing?
Speaker 2: Are you out there? Like have you you out there
Speaker 2: with this?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I pick I haven't picketed this week, but I was
Speaker 4: getting last week in the week before.
Speaker 1: Are there shifts. Are people doing shifts on picking?
Speaker 4: Yeah, so they've got big shifts that they announced the
Speaker 4: day before. Like right now, upfronts, which are the big
Speaker 4: ad sales events that the networks I'll put on, are
Speaker 4: going on. So there's pickets outside all the upfronts. You know,
Speaker 4: usually they bring on the actors for the big fall
Speaker 4: shows or whatever. Actors, like the teamsters have been showing
Speaker 4: a ton of solidarity with the writers. Most of them
Speaker 4: have refused to cross. So it's like, you know, a
Speaker 4: couple of nightly news anchors though even even some of
Speaker 4: the news anchors refused to cross too. I hear so
Speaker 4: oh really, yeah, so there's like that's interesting. Yeah, Lester
Speaker 4: hole he won't cross crossing or he isn't. Both refused
Speaker 4: to cross.
Speaker 1: That's cool.
Speaker 4: Andrew Ross Sorkin of The Times and CNBC did cross.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, Andrew not cool.
Speaker 4: Stephanie rule of MSNBC.
Speaker 2: Stephanie rule cross She definitely crossed crossed. Yeah, okay, who
Speaker 2: else anybody else? That's his is juiciest.
Speaker 4: Seacrest crossed.
Speaker 1: Seacrest crossed. Yeah. What's going on with Fallon?
Speaker 2: I saw there's some He came on Blue Sky, he
Speaker 2: joined Blue sky and people were like fucking hazing him.
Speaker 2: I felt bad for the guy, to be honest, It's like,
Speaker 2: I mean, I know you shouldn't feel too bad, but I.
Speaker 4: Mean, the thing the show is, it's always complicated because
Speaker 4: you know, you don't want to cross the pivot line.
Speaker 4: But if you're doing a nightly if you're doing a
Speaker 4: nightly talk show, like you've got a huge number of
Speaker 4: people who are that's their living, but you can shut
Speaker 4: it down for two weeks, but at some point you
Speaker 4: have to go back to work. Yeah, I think this
Speaker 4: one's going to last a long time, and so I
Speaker 4: would expect most of the talk show hosts to go
Speaker 4: back on without writers and have to do something similar. Though.
Speaker 4: I mean, we'll see, Like I don't.
Speaker 2: I've got Ai that's to spin up chat GBT to
Speaker 2: do some bits. I mean, how hard can it be?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: This is maybe this would be the first big test
Speaker 2: of whether chat GPT can replace human beings that creative
Speaker 2: and depth.
Speaker 4: I mean, this is one of the items in our negotiations.
Speaker 4: It's very important to us because I mean, I think
Speaker 4: one thing that one way to think about all this,
Speaker 4: you know, just to connect it to us talking about
Speaker 4: media before is like we lived through when we were
Speaker 4: talking about earlier on, we lived through a huge sea
Speaker 4: change in the way like journalism is just created and distributed,
Speaker 4: going from print to online. They just decimated the industry.
Speaker 4: That's not the same thing necessarily is what's happening with
Speaker 4: streaming versus studios, But there's a lot of similarities. And
Speaker 4: one of the similarities is just having these huge cash
Speaker 4: rich companies, tech companies like Netflix and Amazon and Apple
Speaker 4: come in and just kind of throw money around in
Speaker 4: a way that is very hard for people to say
Speaker 4: no to that kind of money, but often means also
Speaker 4: diminishing work protections, accepting deals that you wouldn't have otherwise accepted,
Speaker 4: of course, and now I think a lot of people
Speaker 4: are sort of looking around and saying, hold on, like
Speaker 4: what direction is this going in? And having lived through
Speaker 4: that as a journalist and seeing sort of what happened
Speaker 4: to journalism, I think it's very clear what happens when
Speaker 4: you allow yourself to sort of buy the line that like, oh,
Speaker 4: the technology has changed, so you have to accept that
Speaker 4: you just can't get paid as much anymore. And you
Speaker 4: know the other thing about that is that Hollywood actually
Speaker 4: is a great example of an industry that's gone two
Speaker 4: or three times now through major technological shifts and how
Speaker 4: stuff created and distributed. That these unions have lasted since
Speaker 4: before TV, they lasted before the VCR, before DVDs, And
Speaker 4: every time there's been one of these shifts, there has
Speaker 4: been almost like you could almost track it by the year,
Speaker 4: there's been a strike because every single time the studios
Speaker 4: trying and say, oh, well, stuff's changed, we just can't
Speaker 4: pay as much as we used to, and writers and
Speaker 4: actors and directors and stage hands tend to stand up
Speaker 4: and say, hold on, that's not what's going to happen.
Speaker 4: We're going to figure out a new system so that
Speaker 4: we get paid what we deserve to create the content
Speaker 4: that people want to see. And so at the end
Speaker 4: of the tunnel right now you can see a place
Speaker 4: where studios want to use AI to create content as
Speaker 4: a way to pay writers less, as a way to
Speaker 4: employ fewer writers. And it's really important to us to
Speaker 4: stand up and say hold on, Like, for example, if
Speaker 4: you come up with a idea for a story via chat,
Speaker 4: GPT or whatever sophisticated Hollywood AI system. I'm sure Netflix
Speaker 4: is developing somewhere in a dark room and they're huge complex.
Speaker 4: You still have to pay the writer who takes that
Speaker 4: idea and turns it into a script the same rate
Speaker 4: that you would pay writer to write a script from
Speaker 4: a Wikipedia article or whatever.
Speaker 2: Up Right, I mean that just seems like a no brainer. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the work is the same exactly right.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And you know there's another thing where it's like most
Speaker 4: TV shows are written with writer's room, so you get
Speaker 4: ten smart, funny writers. I mean, this is like one
Speaker 4: of those things. I you know, because I started as
Speaker 4: a journalist and moved into TV writing, I'd never really
Speaker 4: experienced the TV writers' room. And now it's like, I
Speaker 4: wish every single thing I write I could write with
Speaker 4: the writer's room, to be able to sit down and
Speaker 4: sayle and be like, heep's great. Here's what we're trying
Speaker 4: to do. Let's get ten like extremely funny, smart people
Speaker 4: to like like just really work on it for five
Speaker 4: months and make it really good. And I think with
Speaker 4: studios they want to cut down the length of the
Speaker 4: writer's rooms. They want to cut down the number of
Speaker 4: writers that you have to hire because they have this
Speaker 4: idea in their heads. And you know, I don't think
Speaker 4: any of them have announced this specifically, but this is
Speaker 4: what everybody's sort of hearing. This is the chatter that
Speaker 4: you have one guy, you have your Damon Lindelow or
Speaker 4: JJ Abrams or Shonda Rhymes. They come up with the idea,
Speaker 4: and then your writer's room is chat GPT or AI
Speaker 4: or whatever else. And then not only does that make
Speaker 4: for worse content, but it's also that means that writers
Speaker 4: in general, when you want to have just one writer
Speaker 4: come in, you know, a human writer coming to punch
Speaker 4: it up, they're now not protected by the contract structures
Speaker 4: that previously existed.
Speaker 1: So all of a.
Speaker 4: Sudden, it's like, you know, there's all these things that
Speaker 4: the studios, there's ways to make it sound reasonable. Interestings
Speaker 4: like oh yeah, sure, why why do you need to
Speaker 4: have ten writers or whatever? And the answer is, and
Speaker 4: not every show needs to have ten writers. But if
Speaker 4: you don't guarantee that every show has ten writers, then
Speaker 4: all of a sudden, all the shows that really do
Speaker 4: need ten writers suddenly won't get right because the studios
Speaker 4: don't want to pay for it. They're going to point
Speaker 4: to the guy who just needed himself, like Mike White,
Speaker 4: who wrote all of White Lotus by himself and say, well,
Speaker 4: Mike White did it.
Speaker 2: Why can't you use a good point? That's a great point. Actually,
Speaker 2: come on, why not? Why can't you just come in.
Speaker 4: The right exactly? And then you have guys who really
Speaker 4: can't doing ten episode seasons, you're going to get a
Speaker 4: lot more, a lot worse TV.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's interesting how it mirrors a lot of
Speaker 2: the rest of what's going on in reality, Like there
Speaker 2: is this pursuit of like massive growth and production, and
Speaker 2: like in some way, I feel like we're starting to
Speaker 2: see the limits of like the content mill. Like I
Speaker 2: feel like with the streaming services, like there's just too
Speaker 2: fucking much. Like like we know that people are starting
Speaker 2: to watch less. We know that there's like an attention
Speaker 2: sort of drift happening. I mean, I don't know about you,
Speaker 2: but I feel like the Sunday night appointment viewing thing
Speaker 2: has come back into focus in a big way around
Speaker 2: the stuff that HBO is doing and some other shows
Speaker 2: like stuff like Yellowjackets, where people are like it really
Speaker 2: is week to week, like talking about there's like a
Speaker 2: discourse about a show, not about the million things that
Speaker 2: you could possibly watching. I mean, I think it is
Speaker 2: that pursuit of that scale is a very is a
Speaker 2: very tech market based fucking thinking on like all of
Speaker 2: this can be bigger and there can be more of it,
Speaker 2: and we can just pump this out, and like AI
Speaker 2: is a solve I mean, yes, the soul for like
Speaker 2: having to do Oh I don't want to deal with
Speaker 2: these fucking creatives or I don't want to room with
Speaker 2: ten people.
Speaker 1: I want one guy.
Speaker 2: But it's also like a solve for scale, right, You're like, oh,
Speaker 2: I can just pump this shit out and I can
Speaker 2: hone it and refine it to what the audience wants
Speaker 2: and it'll be this perfect marriage of like no cost
Speaker 2: production and content that people love, and like we'll just
Speaker 2: make all the money for ourselves. I want to believe
Speaker 2: there's some impossibility there. I want to believe that there's something.
Speaker 2: I think we're all convinced there's some fear lingering out there,
Speaker 2: this AI fear, you know, and listen, I see it
Speaker 2: in art, like, I mean, the stuff that mid Journey
Speaker 2: does is crazy.
Speaker 1: Like I put out a song.
Speaker 2: The other day and I had mid Journey do the
Speaker 2: art for it, and it is like as good as
Speaker 2: any maybe better than any piece of art I could
Speaker 2: have gotten from another person because it did exactly what
Speaker 2: I wanted, exactly what I was trying to get it
Speaker 2: to do. And that's scary. That's going to cost people jobs.
Speaker 2: There's no question it already is costing people jobs. Like
Speaker 2: I see it all over the place, Like I see
Speaker 2: it on articles on news stories all the time, right
Speaker 2: where the content was devalued. So also has the art
Speaker 2: content been devalued.
Speaker 1: Go figure.
Speaker 2: I want to believe that there's going to be a
Speaker 2: point and maybe I'm wrong, And frankly, I don't know
Speaker 2: if I'm right. That the capability of the AI won't
Speaker 2: be as as we think it will be to deliver
Speaker 2: the thing that we think it can deliver. Like I
Speaker 2: feel like in technology and in life in some way,
Speaker 2: we're always looking for this magic single solution that you
Speaker 2: put the thing the input into and the output is
Speaker 2: your solve, right like, and I think that this happens
Speaker 2: all the time. I think pivot to video is one
Speaker 2: of these things, right Or like newsletters is one of
Speaker 2: those things. Not a knock on your thing, but it's
Speaker 2: like this is it. Yeah, we found the solution to
Speaker 2: the problem here, and if we just put that all
Speaker 2: the our bets on that thing.
Speaker 1: It's going to fix it. And like, I think AI
Speaker 1: has a lot of like.
Speaker 2: Promise and obviously a lot of potential danger, but is
Speaker 2: it really like can it really do the things? Is
Speaker 2: there an AI that will be Mike White before Mike
Speaker 2: White exists?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Yeah, can AI do the White lotus? Just because it's
Speaker 2: able to synthesize what has come before it? Yeah, and
Speaker 2: spit something out even if it's of some quality. Have
Speaker 2: we underestimated the randomness of the human mind? Like I
Speaker 2: think then, I think we have a little bit to
Speaker 2: be honest.
Speaker 4: You can almost talk about this in purely technical terms
Speaker 4: right where it's like we've seen these incredible especially large
Speaker 4: language models have advanced by leaps and pounds just by
Speaker 4: throwing power to them, basically, But it doesn't follow from
Speaker 4: that that just by continuing to add more computers, you know,
Speaker 4: more chips, more more power behind those lms, that we're
Speaker 4: going to get to you know, maybe we can get
Speaker 4: to ninety percent of human capability or whatever, and maybe
Speaker 4: for a lot of applications that's good enough. Ninety percent
Speaker 4: is fine, and even maybe for television, But that last
Speaker 4: ten percent, like the ten percent that is memorable and
Speaker 4: meaningful and original and new we may never ever reach that,
Speaker 4: we may not ever get.
Speaker 1: There or whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think that because I think the other the
Speaker 4: flip side of the sort of dynamic you're describing is
Speaker 4: and I can't remember who I feel like there was
Speaker 4: an old Wired article that first kind of articulated this
Speaker 4: idea that like the one of the things the Internet
Speaker 4: has done is sort of allowed the rain of the
Speaker 4: good enough. That there's just like once you realize you
Speaker 4: can kind of penetrate into what people are actually accessing
Speaker 4: and seeing and doing whatever else, that you realize that,
Speaker 4: like you don't have to make everything perfect. You can
Speaker 4: just make stuff good enough and people will consume it
Speaker 4: in vast quantities. In some ways, that's incredibly freeing as
Speaker 4: a creative that like you can allow stuff that wouldn't
Speaker 4: necessarily hit your standards out there into the world. But
Speaker 4: the flip side of it is that like if good
Speaker 4: enough is good enough, then like what's the motivation to
Speaker 4: take it to beyond good enough? Especially like on a
Speaker 4: corporate level where you're trying to press shareholders and make
Speaker 4: a profit whatever else, Like you don't get extra money
Speaker 4: by going from good enough to truly excellent. Like the
Speaker 4: dystopian fear about AI. I think I'm just sort of
Speaker 4: echoing what you're saying, is like maybe a I will
Speaker 4: never be able to write the White Lotus or Succession
Speaker 4: or whatever to your sopran Certainly not the Sopranos, whatever
Speaker 4: TV Shaw you love.
Speaker 1: Definitely not the Soprido, like you're like the other one.
Speaker 4: Well, the Sopranos to me is like that's part that's like,
Speaker 4: that's that's memorable, that's for it.
Speaker 2: I don't I don't disagree, But they'll be remaking it
Speaker 2: in like twenty years of the new cast or not
Speaker 2: even twenty years probably.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right, anyway that there's a million shows that would
Speaker 4: be fine to write with AI, and people might notice
Speaker 4: the difference.
Speaker 1: But maybe crazy atom maybe for instance.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't want to again, I don't want
Speaker 4: I have to. I have to get a job when
Speaker 4: the strike is over. So I'm not going to say
Speaker 4: anything out loud.
Speaker 1: No, I've never watched Gray's Anatomy, so I wouldn't be
Speaker 1: able to tell you.
Speaker 4: But and I think, I mean, I think that's a
Speaker 4: legitimate fear. I mean the other part of it is
Speaker 4: I just think like, there's something about having things created
Speaker 4: by humans that I think is really important to the
Speaker 4: way we consume art and journalism and any other thing.
Speaker 1: To you, to a lot of people, it's not important
Speaker 1: at all.
Speaker 2: The same people who would happily read a user generate
Speaker 2: a piece of content on buzzfit.
Speaker 1: I don't know and enjoy it.
Speaker 4: I wonder like I do kind of. Jake Kang had
Speaker 4: this great line and a piece he wrote for The
Speaker 4: New York a few weeks ago where he said that, like,
Speaker 4: it's really important to him when he reads an article
Speaker 4: that he's getting angry at a human, like when you
Speaker 4: and Jay is like, as a writer, I love who
Speaker 4: who's Like one of the things he does is get
Speaker 4: really mad.
Speaker 1: At people, and he's mad online.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and the human component, like the fact that there's
Speaker 4: a human to be mad at, is important to him,
Speaker 4: the fact. And I think you can transperse that to
Speaker 4: all kinds of emotional states that you want to be.
Speaker 4: Let's say this is a hope more than like a
Speaker 4: thing that I absolutely know to be true. This is
Speaker 4: but it's something that I I hope with reason that
Speaker 4: people will feel some kind of difference between watching Let's
Speaker 4: pretend some far future AI could from a single prompt
Speaker 4: create a ten episode, not just the script, the whole thing.
Speaker 4: That there's a difference between watching that and watching something
Speaker 4: that somebody else made right even that, like, even there's
Speaker 4: a difference between you, Joshua, like I really want to
Speaker 4: watch a cyberpunk adaptation of whatever You type that into
Speaker 4: your TV generating AI and get it that there's a
Speaker 4: difference between that versus something that Mike White typed into
Speaker 4: his thing. I want to write a thing right that,
Speaker 4: even between those two uses of AI, there's a difference that,
Speaker 4: like so much of what we consume, there's this social
Speaker 4: basis to it that I think hasn't quite been worked
Speaker 4: out by places like Netflix. That there's that that they're
Speaker 4: betting on the other half, which is, like you say
Speaker 4: that if we can sufficiently allow the prompt to just
Speaker 4: solve all of these problems, then we're all set. But
Speaker 4: I mean, man, I've been so wrong as I try
Speaker 4: to get people to subscribe to my newsletter about the future.
Speaker 4: Let me just say, I'm so wrong all the time.
Speaker 1: But that's good to know.
Speaker 2: People love to read about a guy who's predicted in
Speaker 2: the future, but getting it wrong that's one of their favorite.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, actually, that's it gives you a person
Speaker 1: to hate online.
Speaker 2: I feel just perhaps, I mean maybe what saves humanity
Speaker 2: is that we need to be mad online, but we
Speaker 2: need to be mad online at someone specifically. We can't
Speaker 2: just be mad online, Like being mad online at an
Speaker 2: AI feels like unproductive, right, just not enough, you know.
Speaker 2: That's that's that's really seizing the means of production, the
Speaker 2: productive anger.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we got to wrap up, Max.
Speaker 2: This was really great first off, not surprising, but really enjoyable.
Speaker 2: And I feel like there's about twenty things we didn't
Speaker 2: get to.
Speaker 1: I had.
Speaker 2: I know that during the time that you were talking,
Speaker 2: several times you were saying something, I'm like, I have
Speaker 2: a great, hilarious rebuttal to this, and I didn't get
Speaker 2: a chance to even get there because we got it
Speaker 2: to so many other things. So you got to come
Speaker 2: back and do this again. Yeah, and people can find you.
Speaker 2: You're not on Twitter. You don't You're not on Twitter.
Speaker 4: No, I'm on blue Sky now though I'm.
Speaker 2: Not really uhy, but nobody else is on blue Sky.
Speaker 2: So that's why you can't promote yourself.
Speaker 1: What is your name? On blue Sky. How come people
Speaker 1: find you?
Speaker 4: It's just it's max read dot info. It's my it's
Speaker 4: my personal.
Speaker 1: Lives at r O.
Speaker 4: That's great dot info.
Speaker 2: I'm also I'm also on blue Sky, I should say,
Speaker 2: because that's a cool thing to tell people.
Speaker 1: Josh, wait, Tibolski dot.
Speaker 2: Com is my this is my blue Sky day, which
Speaker 2: is great. You obviously have this great read Max newsletter
Speaker 2: that you can subscribe to. It's on substack.
Speaker 4: The U R L is Max read dot substack dot com.
Speaker 4: And my last name is spelled R E A D
Speaker 4: like a book.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we know how to spell read. Do people e
Speaker 1: on the end a lot of the time?
Speaker 4: This is this R E E D sometimes?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, I guess I don't think of that read
Speaker 1: at all. What else? Instagram? You don't do Instagram?
Speaker 4: Not really?
Speaker 2: You know, I'm a podcast No, but yeah, I think
Speaker 2: when the I when the higher ups that I heard
Speaker 2: here this, They're going to be like this guy.
Speaker 1: We got to get this guy on the air.
Speaker 4: One can only hope.
Speaker 1: Or a chat GBT equivalent of this guy. No.
Speaker 4: I invite people. I invite people to subscribe to the newsletter.
Speaker 4: It's free. I should mention there is a subscription fee.
Speaker 4: You can pay for it, but I write one free
Speaker 4: weekly column.
Speaker 2: So I think you can get that the Nemesis Sunglass
Speaker 2: Post for free. And I think that if you want
Speaker 2: to go a deeper dive on nemmesis you get that,
Speaker 2: you have to pay a few bucks.
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, and you will after you read the
Speaker 4: Sunglass post, you will want the deeper dive.
Speaker 2: I do think that's a big way to kind of
Speaker 2: dangle the subscription at people.
Speaker 1: To get that.
Speaker 2: That's a glass posts. Anyhow, it's a super fun Thank
Speaker 2: you for taking the time. Well, that is our show
Speaker 2: for this week. I think obviously I've I've concluded the
Speaker 2: conversation and now that I've had nothing left my all
Speaker 2: of my essence has been drained from me. That sounds disgusting, actually,
Speaker 2: but I go into a cryogenic chamber at the end
Speaker 2: of every show and I'm there until the next show,
Speaker 2: so I have to begin my long slumber. We'll be
Speaker 2: back next week with more what future, and as always,
Speaker 2: I wish you and your family the very best.
Speaker 4: Height