Speaker 1: Really Now, Really, really.
Speaker 2: Now, really Hello, and welcome to this episode of Really
Speaker 2: No Really. Todanyk, Jason Alexander, and Peter Tilden are joined
Speaker 2: by actor, producer and director Alex Winter to discuss his
Speaker 2: documentary The YouTube Effect and the Bill and Ted movies,
Speaker 2: All Tech being porn adjacent, performing Magic, Keanu Reeves, and
Speaker 2: Alex's years on Broadway. My only wish for this episode
Speaker 2: is that we get to hear Jason and Alex sing
Speaker 2: some show tunes together. And now here they are Jason,
Speaker 2: Alexander and Peter Tilden with Alex.
Speaker 3: Really Welcome to Really No, Really.
Speaker 4: Just don't make Jason and I sing any show tunes.
Speaker 3: Is that gonna be Is that gonna be harrible for you?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 4: It would actually be amazing. He's he's a substantially better
Speaker 4: singer that I am. But nonetheless, I.
Speaker 3: Haven't heard you what you know, Alex? Just Fredy Alex
Speaker 3: Wonders joined us. We won't make you do songs with Jason,
Speaker 3: thank you, But but I got to mention, you know
Speaker 3: from Bill and Ted and you know him from the Circle.
Speaker 3: By the way, you were just you were so freaking good.
Speaker 3: I thank you.
Speaker 4: I don't think I'm allowed to talk about it because
Speaker 4: of the strike. Am I here?
Speaker 3: I don't know. Don't promote you know you were. Don't promote,
Speaker 3: just talk about it properally.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, it's already coming gone, so I can't believe
Speaker 4: it yet.
Speaker 3: You were great. You were I wanted to do as
Speaker 3: my lawyer because you were very stern with it, like, yeah,
Speaker 3: all right, hit me with it, very very cool. Yeah.
Speaker 3: But I didn't realize your child. I forgot your child.
Speaker 3: You were on stage with JL Brenner, I was King,
Speaker 3: and and Sandy Duncan. Yep, you were a Broadway child.
Speaker 3: I was from from what age?
Speaker 4: Uh? Well, as Jason knows because he was there. I
Speaker 4: moved to New York City in nineteen seventy seven and
Speaker 4: I joined a management company that Jason was at.
Speaker 3: This kid.
Speaker 4: Yeah and uh and you know, it was a very
Speaker 4: active sort of environment. They were training us to sing
Speaker 4: and to sort of get her act together. So I
Speaker 4: was twelve thirteen and I'd done it child acting in
Speaker 4: where I'd come from, which was Saint Louis and London,
Speaker 4: but nothing on the level that I got parachuted into
Speaker 4: because they suddenly needed a kid on Broadway to replace
Speaker 4: a kid that was on before they took the national tour.
Speaker 4: So there was this urgent training. It was like something
Speaker 4: out of a bad martial arts movie, right, where like
Speaker 4: we're gonna teach you kung fu in like two weeks.
Speaker 4: You have to go in front of one of the
Speaker 4: toughest musical directors on Broadway and sing an entire song,
Speaker 4: and you were not a trained vocalist. So I was
Speaker 4: a trained actor at that age, but not a trained vocalist.
Speaker 4: So they like boot camped me into singing.
Speaker 3: And I went, did you enjoy it? Do you remember
Speaker 3: about I still train?
Speaker 4: I love it? I love I love it so much you.
Speaker 1: Love I always say to Jason, I will also tell
Speaker 1: you because I mean, it's a very handsome man, this guy,
Speaker 1: I will tell you as a fairly head of sexual man,
Speaker 1: adorable child, I mean, with curly blonde hair and just
Speaker 1: like one of those little cherub looking killed Marjor.
Speaker 3: Gordoner right exactly. So I'm sorry for that reference. Looking
Speaker 3: at it always fascinates me. Brought brought it that. It's
Speaker 3: so judgmental, it's so difficult, and it's so repetitive, right
Speaker 3: that if you don't like it, or if you're going
Speaker 3: through a bad time, you still got to do to
Speaker 3: matinee in a regularly. No.
Speaker 4: I did eight shows a week. I did King and
Speaker 4: I on Broadway for a bit, then on the road.
Speaker 4: It was all about a year all told, including at
Speaker 4: the Pantagious. Then I went back and pretty much immediately
Speaker 4: went into Peter Pan with Sandy Duncan. Did that for
Speaker 4: almost three years. So that was all of high school.
Speaker 4: Eight shows a week. You know this animal, Michael john
Speaker 4: I was John Johnny.
Speaker 3: What was your life? It was? It was funny.
Speaker 4: I was talking about someone about this earlier who went
Speaker 4: to professional children's school, which is where all my friends went.
Speaker 4: And my family was like, we're not putting you in
Speaker 4: that place because you're just going to become like a maniac.
Speaker 4: So I went to a public high school in New
Speaker 4: Jersey and I took the bus in every day and
Speaker 4: they let me out early on Wednesday. So I had
Speaker 4: this weird, bifurcated life where I had all my normal friends,
Speaker 4: all my normal kind of suburban life, and then I
Speaker 4: had this crazy.
Speaker 3: Point if you went to school, got out early, Yeah,
Speaker 3: took public.
Speaker 4: Transportation, took a bus into the port. Authority, did the show,
Speaker 4: went and did the show, and then got back on
Speaker 4: the bus and went home, and I did my homework
Speaker 4: on the bus.
Speaker 3: Here's what's crazy. What time did you get home?
Speaker 4: Eleven thirty or so?
Speaker 1: And you know, nowadays, oh my god, I even think
Speaker 1: they would allow a child actor to do that anymore.
Speaker 3: Like Matilda on Broadway. Yeah, there were four Matilda's and
Speaker 3: they all went on every week. Yeah, a bus. How
Speaker 3: were you coming home? I was?
Speaker 4: I was, well, I was, you know, Times Square working
Speaker 4: on forty sixth Street from nineteen seventy. I was in
Speaker 4: the Times Square from seventy eight to eighty three.
Speaker 3: I guess, so you were what about sixteen? I was?
Speaker 4: I was, Yeah, I was thirteen to seventeen. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: doing your homework doing you're hanging out at night and
Speaker 4: going to shows with the other cast members and you know, but.
Speaker 3: It was kids just spitting out, spitballs to each other,
Speaker 3: and you're going out a really tough night last night
Speaker 3: Women in the third Row?
Speaker 4: Was I mean, if you have an adult experience at night?
Speaker 4: Oh I did, yeah, very much. So, oh oh my god. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I made a documentary about showbiz kids. Yeahbo it ain't pretty,
Speaker 4: it was. I'm lucky. We're all lucky.
Speaker 1: I am always you know, I've worked with enough kids
Speaker 1: now as an adult, and I always wonder what the
Speaker 1: experiences for them. Yeah, I think the kids that I've
Speaker 1: worked with have have actually had decent experience lives and experiences.
Speaker 3: But I know that that.
Speaker 4: It can go a number of ways.
Speaker 3: Alex, want to look at you. Most kids have a
Speaker 3: hard time just doing a homework. We're taking public expectation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's an adultified world. I mean in every conceivable way.
Speaker 3: And the thing about it though, is to you know, yes,
Speaker 3: it's hard work. But as Jason, as you know from having.
Speaker 4: Done so much theater, I remember the very first day
Speaker 4: I went to rehearse because you'll Berner basically ran king
Speaker 4: and I didn't take a director's credit, but he directed
Speaker 4: the whole show. He did the audition, did everything, and
Speaker 4: because the show was already running on Broadway, he had
Speaker 4: to rehearse me while the show. The only way to
Speaker 4: get me adapted to the stage was to rehearse me
Speaker 4: while the show was going on. So there'd be a
Speaker 4: scrim and certain scenes would happen in front of a scrim,
Speaker 4: So for those like ten minutes I had to work
Speaker 4: on the set. And so there was on this giant
Speaker 4: Broadway was the Gershwin right, the eras on this giant
Speaker 4: Broadway stage by myself in the dark because of the
Speaker 4: way a scrim works, as you know, they can't it's
Speaker 4: like a two way mirror. They can't see through it,
Speaker 4: but I can see them. So there's like fricking eighteen
Speaker 4: hundred people and you'll Brinner with a spotlight on him
Speaker 4: singing his song.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And here I am thirteen years.
Speaker 4: Old, like fresh off the bus from Saint Louis, and
Speaker 4: I was like, I never want to do anything else,
Speaker 4: like this is paradise, like I mean, so I was
Speaker 4: so happy in that environment that it made all of
Speaker 4: the stressors.
Speaker 3: Well, the juice that you got as a thirteen year
Speaker 3: old was the applause. Was the crowd was he does?
Speaker 4: I mean, Berner wouldn't stop. Now they do it with
Speaker 4: every show bit much. But Brinn wouldn't let people go
Speaker 4: home till they gave him a standing ovation. So the
Speaker 4: curtain call every night it was the standing ovation because
Speaker 4: he literally wouldn't let them leave. Now, pretty much every
Speaker 4: show you go to everyone gets on their feet, which
Speaker 4: is kind of you know, but but so it was.
Speaker 4: It was spectacular. I mean it was very much his
Speaker 4: show in consence Towers, who was Anna, you know, it
Speaker 4: was Lewis, I did my thing whatever, I wasn't starring fast.
Speaker 3: We're in a fascinating start and that will will leap ahead.
Speaker 3: We'll get back to Bill and Ted later and all
Speaker 3: the other stuff. But the really, no, really was we're
Speaker 3: all dealing with these algorithms. We're all dealing with the
Speaker 3: three companies that are running social media, and you.
Speaker 4: Point all of technology.
Speaker 3: I would say, but all of technology, and you pointed
Speaker 3: out two of them and showed that there's no silent
Speaker 3: between them. That's right, it's it's it's the YouTube and Google. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you had access to the CEO, you would access
Speaker 3: to the guys who start, the guy who started, which
Speaker 3: was that made me laugh at people don't realize that
Speaker 3: the big social media platforms are all porn adjacent. That's right,
Speaker 3: they all started to explain if they haven't seen the document.
Speaker 4: Basically, every every technical innovation scales because of pornography. That's
Speaker 4: kind of a well known thing in technology. Yeah, I
Speaker 4: know that's shocking, right, but including including PayPal, which the
Speaker 4: only reason PayPal took off was because people were using
Speaker 4: it for for porn transactions and fact, if you look
Speaker 4: at in the social network. In the film, they talk
Speaker 4: about how that started as basically you know exactly and
Speaker 4: you know what that was about. And then YouTube started
Speaker 4: with a service called Hot or Not where they were like, Okay,
Speaker 4: finally we have the most robust technology to get video
Speaker 4: online which no one had ever figured out before. We're
Speaker 4: going to use it to cure cancer. We're gonna we're
Speaker 4: going to allow like old people to see their their
Speaker 4: their young family before they passed. No, we're not going
Speaker 4: to do any of those things. We're going to create
Speaker 4: Hot or Not so you could rank how hot or
Speaker 4: not hot someone who's video based on their video.
Speaker 3: And by the way, the money came from for humanity,
Speaker 3: the money came from PayPal, which was porn related, and
Speaker 3: the two guys who started the three guys Yeah sold
Speaker 3: it within a year year and a half.
Speaker 4: Yeah to Google four one point six billion in two
Speaker 4: thousand and five, which is like trillions in today's money.
Speaker 4: It was crazy, It was unprecedented.
Speaker 3: So that was the intent of this was that innocent, innocent.
Speaker 3: It was rating. It was to rate people and then
Speaker 3: it grew.
Speaker 4: It did, but to be fair to the founders, one
Speaker 4: of whom Steve Chann is in the film, they they
Speaker 4: saw its potential beyond Hot or Not immediately and began
Speaker 4: to it wasn't hot or not when Google bought it
Speaker 4: right by home. Yeah, by then they realized that, no,
Speaker 4: this is actually a service that is going to change
Speaker 4: the world in certain ways in terms of what I mean.
Speaker 4: We all know this if we work in media, that
Speaker 4: there's so much power to the visual image, right, and
Speaker 4: a moving visual image. And in two thousand and five
Speaker 4: is as recent as that is, was really hard to
Speaker 4: move around online. It was almost impossible, and like people
Speaker 4: have been doing it since the nineties, but it was hard.
Speaker 4: And suddenly this thing comes along where there's just like
Speaker 4: I can upload my cat, I can upload my daughter
Speaker 4: taking her first steps. And it blew people's minds and
Speaker 4: it scaled immediately, like within within the first year of
Speaker 4: you two buying it, And everybody made fun of of Google.
Speaker 3: I saw that what's his name from Mars sharknank mark.
Speaker 3: Humans said it is one of the dumbest investments.
Speaker 4: But everybody did. Susan caught so much flak for being
Speaker 4: so so bullish about wanting to acquire this company, Susan,
Speaker 4: they started googling. Yeah, very very bright lady from a
Speaker 4: very bright family, full stop. But she really did have
Speaker 4: the vision early on that a lot of other people lacked.
Speaker 4: And it's hard to quantify how big this thing is,
Speaker 4: which is why people don't talk about it very often.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: They think about it as a social media platform, which
Speaker 4: it really isn't. It's it's it's all of humans recorded
Speaker 4: history in one place, which you can't find anywhere else.
Speaker 4: It's it's obviously influencers, and it's DIY, and there's a
Speaker 4: social media component, and it's all of those things. But
Speaker 4: it's also all of our media, all of our music,
Speaker 4: all of our entertainment, all of our news, and all
Speaker 4: of our search for certain demographic That's all under why.
Speaker 3: I was shocked, because it is used.
Speaker 1: This is where I have never used it, but I
Speaker 1: guess a lot of people do. I. I do use
Speaker 1: social media to get some news sources, but I've never
Speaker 1: thought to go to YouTube.
Speaker 3: That's right. Is that really a big component of you?
Speaker 4: My I've got three boys. My eldest is about to
Speaker 4: turn twenty five. They're all like super balanced great kids.
Speaker 4: None of them got rabbit Hold or red Pildar, any
Speaker 4: of those things. But they live on YouTube and they
Speaker 4: don't really use anything.
Speaker 3: So did my son twenty seven. Yeah, and I when
Speaker 3: we watched this together. That's what curates his news. That's
Speaker 3: what that's I mean, it's.
Speaker 4: Not only his music and everything and everything.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When I say TV or streaming, he goes, what, Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's all there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, Jason, they're going to know you by
Speaker 4: watching either all of your stuff or clips of your
Speaker 4: stuff on YouTube.
Speaker 3: And what is my residual payment for that?
Speaker 4: I would say that somewhere between zero and zero.
Speaker 3: That is that abides with what.
Speaker 4: I yes, which is why we're striking right, because if
Speaker 4: all the other companies could have that model, they would absolutely.
Speaker 3: Use forever. Just use that and put it up forever.
Speaker 3: And that's why I want to have you into. You
Speaker 3: didn't demonize it, you didn't say it was evil and
Speaker 3: the enemy. The negative is nobody really understands the algorithm,
Speaker 3: but we do know, or it's implied that outrage is entertainment.
Speaker 3: So instead of getting clicks, this is not clickbait. This
Speaker 3: is get you in and keep you with. And that's
Speaker 3: what I want to talk to you about the algorithm
Speaker 3: that accelerates what you're watching. And I saw the interviews
Speaker 3: with quite a few people on your on your documentary
Speaker 3: to take some down rabbit holes that are quite dangerous,
Speaker 3: and they go to on ramps as you point out,
Speaker 3: which are innachio. So I think you pointed out self
Speaker 3: help or whatever mental health which can end up taking
Speaker 3: you to some really dangerous places. And Jason, it's interesting
Speaker 3: because there's a naivity about how can can't you control
Speaker 3: how that happens? Can't you resist having that happen?
Speaker 4: Yeah, what's interesting and what we get into in the
Speaker 4: film is is that we're now kind of even past
Speaker 4: an algorithm slashed rabbit hole era. Where YouTube, unlike any
Speaker 4: of these other platforms, is once you get pulled in,
Speaker 4: you're not just watching a five second or thirty second
Speaker 4: or two minute little video clip you're watching. You're connecting
Speaker 4: with an individual who has a channel that probably has
Speaker 4: a lot of money behind it and an enormous amount
Speaker 4: of viewers that's talking to you for an hour. And
Speaker 4: because of the way you tube works, it's like that
Speaker 4: person is looking in their webcam. So there's the connection
Speaker 4: between you and that influencer, that person on that channel
Speaker 4: is extremely powerful, much more powerful than an anchor on
Speaker 4: TV who's sort of vaguely talking to the fourth wall
Speaker 4: myriad cameras, but you're sitting at home. You don't feel
Speaker 4: like you have any kind of personal connection to that person.
Speaker 4: I think that what YouTube didn't e and see coming
Speaker 4: that I think still not talked about enough in the
Speaker 4: news is that this is more of like a parasocial
Speaker 4: issue than an algorithmic issue, Meaning these people feel they
Speaker 4: have a deep bond, like a personal intimate bond with
Speaker 4: the person on the other end of that webcam who
Speaker 4: they really don't know at all, and so that has
Speaker 4: been that has led to a lot of dangerous propaganda
Speaker 4: and people being incited to violence and all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 4: Sure you can get into party politics, but this is
Speaker 4: a human nature issue because a everyone responds to outrage,
Speaker 4: no matter what the outrage is. But it's also being
Speaker 4: monetized by this company, by any of these companies, because
Speaker 4: they are ad based. So the more they keep you
Speaker 4: on platform, the longer they've got you on these channels.
Speaker 4: Watching whatever show is like pulling in and they've got
Speaker 4: ads attached to it. Then the more money they make,
Speaker 4: and that's where you end up with a problem. So
Speaker 4: I've been arguing for a while, which other people have too,
Speaker 4: that this is no different than what like pull ups
Speaker 4: are and Aharst did right for their newspapers back in
Speaker 4: the late eighteen hundreds. This is like grab people with
Speaker 4: the most salacious stuff you can and then monetize it.
Speaker 4: But when you're dealing with four point six billion views
Speaker 4: a day, which is what YouTube gets, which is way
Speaker 4: beyond anything else on the planet, including every media conglomerate,
Speaker 4: every TV channel, and every social media platform, and you're
Speaker 4: monetizing that kind of traffic, that's where dangers.
Speaker 3: Look.
Speaker 1: I'm fascinated by the ad component and the ad revenue
Speaker 1: component because again I'm apparently using YouTube in a very
Speaker 1: pedestrian way.
Speaker 3: But I have never paid attention to an ad on YouTube.
Speaker 1: I can't, you know, if they give me the five
Speaker 1: second thing, I'm counting it down as stats as I
Speaker 1: can go. There are some you can't get rid of,
Speaker 1: but I have never swayed to a product or a
Speaker 1: thing as sold to me by YouTube. I can't believe
Speaker 1: that people are spending money to advertise on it. I
Speaker 1: is it effective?
Speaker 4: It's it is massive when you look at the numbers.
Speaker 4: And look, when you make a doc, you don't go
Speaker 4: in knowing everything. You go in knowing generally what something
Speaker 4: is about. Maybe was you know, a specific understanding of
Speaker 4: the landscape. But every week on this thing is I
Speaker 4: was working, the numbers just kept blowing my mind. I
Speaker 4: mean the ad revenue. And to be fair, look during COVID,
Speaker 4: everyone was stuck on YouTube. They made they made, you know,
Speaker 4: more than most countries.
Speaker 3: Do you know the number? Do you know the numbers?
Speaker 4: I mean it's in our movie. I think it's three
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty six billions. Hundreds of yea, hundreds of billions. Yeah, well,
Speaker 4: I mean Google is worth in the trillions. But yes,
Speaker 4: you're dealing with billions as far as YouTube is concerned.
Speaker 4: And I think it's you know, hundreds of millions per
Speaker 4: anim but you're dealing with an enormous amount of eyeballs
Speaker 4: on content. So if you're an advertiser, it absolutely matters
Speaker 4: to you. Like if someone is seeing forget TV advertising,
Speaker 4: forget the Super Bowl, it's like the Super all day
Speaker 4: every day is how they look at it, So yes,
Speaker 4: they And the thing other thing to remember is that.
Speaker 4: You know, I encounter this a lot of times, people saying, well,
Speaker 4: I don't do anything on YouTube other than like figure
Speaker 4: out how to put a triple a battery into my remote,
Speaker 4: or you know, want to learn a song or something.
Speaker 4: But everyone is doing that all day and those and
Speaker 4: they're doing it all over the world. It's not relegated
Speaker 4: to our country or just North America. So the entire
Speaker 4: planet is glued that. I mean, the number one most
Speaker 4: viewed website in the world is Google. The number two
Speaker 4: most viewed website in the planet is YouTube. There are
Speaker 4: more people watching YouTube than anything else on the planet.
Speaker 4: Google's mostly text, right, so there's more eyeballs on this
Speaker 4: thing than anything else. So for advertisers, matter chased.
Speaker 3: In a sense to people listening. One of the moments
Speaker 3: that blew me away. And we were trying to find
Speaker 3: this kid, but you got the kid. And you know,
Speaker 3: I'm talking about the Ryan Ryan talk about talk about
Speaker 3: Ryan's little business on YouTube.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, that family's side hustle is they had a
Speaker 4: kid who started on YouTube at three. He's now nine.
Speaker 4: I mean, amazing kid and to be fair, really amazing parents.
Speaker 4: He's super lucky because his parents are really smart. They
Speaker 4: must be making between one hundred and fifty two hundred
Speaker 4: million dollars a year doing going on and saying, hey,
Speaker 4: this started when he was three, right like, hey, I'm
Speaker 4: going to look at this new toy. I got come
Speaker 4: look at it with me. And so then people started
Speaker 4: watching him playing with toys. Toy manufacturers kind of perked
Speaker 4: up and went, oh, let's get him to play with
Speaker 4: our toys. So okay, well that's going to cost you.
Speaker 4: And then advertisers perked up and said, oh, this is
Speaker 4: a great place for us to advertise because he's getting
Speaker 4: hundreds of millions of views on these videos. And next thing,
Speaker 4: you know, it's an industry. I mean, it's a formidable industry.
Speaker 3: Kid is a rock star.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's huge, I mean it's I mean, these are
Speaker 4: huge numbers.
Speaker 3: But also you pointed out interestingly that it was an
Speaker 3: easy loophole for other people to start monetizing on children's
Speaker 3: programming on YouTube and they're putting horrible stuff up. Yeah,
Speaker 3: there was a pure stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there was a period, and to be fair to YouTube,
Speaker 4: they shut it down on YouTube kids. But there was
Speaker 4: a period when people were gaming the algorithm and putting
Speaker 4: incredibly horrific, volatile, violent content into the kids programming, and
Speaker 4: we talk about it in the movie. I think the
Speaker 4: issue right now that is significant there with the kids,
Speaker 4: and we talk about this generally, is that, you know,
Speaker 4: we were talking about us being on you know, in
Speaker 4: the business young Yeah, at least we had like the
Speaker 4: Cougan Act, and we had you know, there were and
Speaker 4: now I think you have quite a few safeguards. I
Speaker 4: do a lot of stuff directing the kids too, and
Speaker 4: there's like not just a tutor, but there's like a
Speaker 4: making sure you're, yeah, taking care of the kids properly.
Speaker 4: And none of those safeguards exist in YouTube. So you
Speaker 4: have all of these kid influencers and it's really and
Speaker 4: they're just like, hey, just upload the content and they're
Speaker 4: doing deals with them. So it's a little duplessitous because
Speaker 4: YouTube is involved to a degree, right, but there's no
Speaker 4: real there's no standards and practices, there's no safeguards, there's
Speaker 4: no laws, there's no regulation. It's just the while West.
Speaker 4: So you've got to hope everybody's parents is great, which,
Speaker 4: as you and I both know, it is not. What's
Speaker 4: going to happen with every kid who's making five to
Speaker 4: one hundred and fifty million dollars.
Speaker 3: What would be the.
Speaker 1: What would be the incentive to put inappropriate material into
Speaker 1: the kids channel?
Speaker 3: If you is it just for the thrill of being
Speaker 3: able to do it?
Speaker 4: That's exactly right, That's exactly right. There's I mean, the
Speaker 4: way the internet functions, especially what YouTube is interesting in
Speaker 4: that it's it's has so many eyes on it, and
Speaker 4: yet it has a social media component to the degree
Speaker 4: that if you go into the comments section, that's where
Speaker 4: everybody hangs out. So if you think about the Internet,
Speaker 4: you think about what's going on in Twitter and sort
Speaker 4: of other areas. And there's been a lot of stuff
Speaker 4: written about this sort of the kind of troll world.
Speaker 4: And this can get political because people control for political reasons, right,
Speaker 4: but a lot of that is really just is just anarchistic.
Speaker 4: It's just it's just blow it up, right because we can.
Speaker 4: It's like the it's the terrorist version of just like
Speaker 4: calling your local ball in alle and asking if they've
Speaker 4: got ten pound. Well, right, but now you're doing that
Speaker 4: with an audience of four and a half billion, says,
Speaker 4: you know, on every phone line in your house. So
Speaker 4: there was a multitude of reasons why to do that.
Speaker 4: But also there's a lot of pranking that has legis,
Speaker 4: suicides and things like that that so it can get
Speaker 4: pretty serious. You're dealing with children's mental health and things
Speaker 4: like that.
Speaker 3: My takeaway from you, and tell me if I get
Speaker 3: this right, was, and I think I got it right,
Speaker 3: was you said this generation is not going to fix it.
Speaker 3: The ones here now because you got basically Congress, you
Speaker 3: got eighty two year old guys with the clock blinking
Speaker 3: red on their BCR. Still they're not the ones going
Speaker 3: to solve it. The next generation is going to solve it.
Speaker 3: But you said ten fifteen years away. But on the
Speaker 3: twenty fifth of August in Europe they just passed legislation
Speaker 3: or the starting to pass legislation to try and control
Speaker 3: this and social media and these platforms. So what do
Speaker 3: you think about that?
Speaker 4: Look, I don't want to drag us into a kind
Speaker 4: of a thorny complicated area. I've been during the strike.
Speaker 4: I've been very involved with pulling people together with AI
Speaker 4: experts and other people to try to help them understand
Speaker 4: this area because it's extremely complicated. I would only say
Speaker 4: that I'm not a huge fan of a lot of
Speaker 4: the AI and Internet regulation that's going on in Europe
Speaker 4: at the moment. I think they're getting a lot wrong.
Speaker 4: I think, especially in the kids space. There's been a
Speaker 4: lot written about it. There's a lot of kids legislation
Speaker 4: that's being pushed right now here in the US that's
Speaker 4: being sort of copied from the legislation in the EU,
Speaker 4: which I think is not great legislation. I'm not by
Speaker 4: any means alone that you literally google these things and
Speaker 4: you'll see a lot of criticism. And the reason for
Speaker 4: that is that there's an understandable fear of these new
Speaker 4: technologies that have got everybody's kids on them all the time,
Speaker 4: that isn't matched with an understanding of those technologies by
Speaker 4: many people, especially of our generation and older. So they're
Speaker 4: just like, well, we've got to do something, and they
Speaker 4: grab the biggest mallet they can find and they start
Speaker 4: whacking at it really hard. And we saw that happen
Speaker 4: with Napster, and like the mess that happened after that
Speaker 4: that in many ways led to the streaming crisis that's
Speaker 4: now got us on strike. I think that new generations
Speaker 4: that are coming up that understand these technologies better but
Speaker 4: also understand the risks if you, for example, and I
Speaker 4: won't bore everybody with draw like what's going on with
Speaker 4: this legislation, but part of what's wrong with it is
Speaker 4: is they're fighting really hard for ID verification. That can
Speaker 4: be really bad, especially for kids. You don't want to
Speaker 4: have your ID being fed into the Internet where all
Speaker 4: kinds of bad actors can get access to it, and
Speaker 4: that has led to a lot of really terrible things
Speaker 4: happening to most either children or LGBTQ other marginalized groups
Speaker 4: who use the Internet in a more anonymous way and
Speaker 4: need to remain anonymous. It's very very important. They're also
Speaker 4: looking to break encryption, especially in the EU, very bad
Speaker 4: idea that will unprotect a lot of people who need
Speaker 4: to stay protected. So I'm sort of more in favor
Speaker 4: of more nuanced ways forward that will take longer to
Speaker 4: get to, but we'll keep people keep they won't won't
Speaker 4: break the Internet, and it will keep more people protected.
Speaker 1: I have always believed and advocated for the idea that
Speaker 1: one of the reasons that the Internet can be such
Speaker 1: a cesspool is because of anonymity. Just Twitter, Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm verified. It took a lot to get verified. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as long as it's coming from my account and I
Speaker 1: haven't been hacked. If it's on there, I said it,
Speaker 1: I'm accountable for it. I have a feeling there'd be
Speaker 1: a lot less trolling, a lot less miss and disinformation
Speaker 1: if it wasn't anonymous, if you had to stand behind
Speaker 1: the things you put out into the market sce that
Speaker 1: accountability would be a very big factor in cleaning some
Speaker 1: of this mess up. Now You're you're proposing is that
Speaker 1: there are vulnerable people who rely on anonymity, But do
Speaker 1: you really feel that the scale tips to that side rather.
Speaker 3: Than the one I'm describing.
Speaker 4: I think that the issue is more technological, meaning it's
Speaker 4: not as easy to get to the place that you
Speaker 4: just described as one would hope. That's all I'm saying.
Speaker 4: It's different for celebrities to verify because there's only one
Speaker 4: of you, right, and there's only one of most of
Speaker 4: the people who That was the problem with what Musk
Speaker 4: did when Twitter was purchased by him, was he suddenly
Speaker 4: allowed everyone to verify by throwing some money at it,
Speaker 4: and suddenly you had copycat accounts. And that's sort of
Speaker 4: my point. It kind of proved the point that is
Speaker 4: very difficult to moderate content it's very difficult to properly
Speaker 4: verify people. Really good even not so good hackers or
Speaker 4: will get around that and create fake counts, accounts that
Speaker 4: look verified in two seconds, so you will the Internet
Speaker 4: will always be a wash in some degree of Like,
Speaker 4: the nastiest people that we're most worried about are not
Speaker 4: going to get thwarted by verification requirements, right, They're gonna
Speaker 4: end run them, and they're gonna have a little AI
Speaker 4: photo that looks like a real human being with a name,
Speaker 4: that probably has a driver's license, and they'll be whoever,
Speaker 4: there'll be some guy in Macedonia and a hacker farm.
Speaker 4: So it's much harder to get there. That's the point. Now,
Speaker 4: it's not to say we won't. It's not say we
Speaker 4: shouldn't be fighting for it, not say that there isn't
Speaker 4: all kinds of good stuff in the AI bill and
Speaker 4: some of the other stuff at the AEU. It just
Speaker 4: means we've got to be a little a little bit
Speaker 4: more nuanced with it.
Speaker 3: So I try.
Speaker 4: Not to say, oh, we can't ever do it, we
Speaker 4: shouldn't do anything like, oh God, I don't feel that
Speaker 4: way at all. I feel like I'm super pro regulation
Speaker 4: and there's a lot of people who don't like that.
Speaker 4: They want no regulation, no breaks, But I think we
Speaker 4: have to. We have to have regulations, standards and practices.
Speaker 4: We have to have guardrails.
Speaker 3: You have to. But we got to, like you said,
Speaker 3: we got to thread the needle really carefully. We do. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So the other thing I wanted to ask you, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit off the top, but I'm fascinated because
Speaker 1: I know you for so long. It seemingly you are
Speaker 1: on a very different path. When I mention you, you
Speaker 1: were a kid who seemed to have a singular passion.
Speaker 1: That passion had become demonstrably rewarding and positive. Your career
Speaker 1: as a as an actor and even as a director
Speaker 1: was clicking and working beautifully. And then you pulled back,
Speaker 1: You went away, and when you came back, you came
Speaker 1: back much more in the guise of a director and
Speaker 1: producer and particularly kind of in this area, this arena.
Speaker 1: So I'm fascinated if you care to talk about it
Speaker 1: at all, because I'm fascinated by people that create different
Speaker 1: second acts and third acts for themselves. What was it
Speaker 1: that said I gotta, I gotta pull away from this
Speaker 1: for a while, and what how did you find this
Speaker 1: other light to be guided by it?
Speaker 3: I'm going that way.
Speaker 4: They're oddly connected. And it took me a minute to
Speaker 4: figure that out. Because life is life. It's happening to you, right,
Speaker 4: So it's not like, you know, unlike George Lucas claiming
Speaker 4: he constructed all of Star Wars in advance, which nobody believed.
Speaker 4: You know, it just happens. Then you figure out retrospectively
Speaker 4: why what happened happened. When I was doing the show
Speaker 4: Biz Kids doc for HBO, what struck me because I
Speaker 4: was My whole process with that was to get someone
Speaker 4: from a hundred year old like the first Silent movie
Speaker 4: child star, all the way up to like the big
Speaker 4: Instagram kid of today, and then everyone in between age
Speaker 4: wise into one conversation and see what the similarities were.
Speaker 4: And what blew my mind and a lot of the
Speaker 4: other subjects that I spoke to, was that everyone had
Speaker 4: the exact same story. It didn't matter whether it was
Speaker 4: baby Peggy who was one hundred and two or you know,
Speaker 4: a kid who was like on a Disney show with
Speaker 4: twenty million Instagram followers. Everyone had the same trajectory. It
Speaker 4: was really bizarre. I guess if you're a behavioral psychologist,
Speaker 4: maybe it wouldn't be to you. You'd be like, oh,
Speaker 4: that's because blah blah blah happens to your brain.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 4: But all of us had started really young, had had
Speaker 4: a certain amount of success, meaning we were doing it
Speaker 4: all the time, and pulled out of normal school, pulled
Speaker 4: out of normal life. Every one of us had bailed
Speaker 4: on the industry in our twenties and had taken a
Speaker 4: break and had come back later.
Speaker 3: And every single I sat.
Speaker 4: With, every pro was like, oh, you did that, and
Speaker 4: you did that, and baby peggotted like and everyone she
Speaker 4: like went away, I can't do this, and more came
Speaker 4: back had like And then a lot of people came
Speaker 4: back and just started doing it again, right like Henry
Speaker 4: Thomas is a good example, or Mara wilsoner you know,
Speaker 4: people a bunch of people who can think of and
Speaker 4: and I was listening to them, going, well, that's what
Speaker 4: I did, And I thought, why did I do that?
Speaker 4: I mean, I knew at the time, around the time
Speaker 4: Bill and Ted two was done, I'd been acting every
Speaker 4: day since I was nine years old, and I was exhausted,
Speaker 4: like just emotionally, and I'd gone to film school, and
Speaker 4: I had other interests, but I was so on the treadmill.
Speaker 4: I had the agents, I had the manager, I had
Speaker 4: the public I had all this stuff. I was twenty four,
Speaker 4: maybe maybe twenty five, like my eldest son, I was
Speaker 4: about to turn in twenty five. I'm like, my god,
Speaker 4: he's a baby. I was like at the end of
Speaker 4: a career already, you know. And uh, And I think
Speaker 4: I was just I just needed regular life, right, I
Speaker 4: just like developmentally, I left LA. I got rid, I
Speaker 4: mean politely, I got rid of my acting agents, like
Speaker 4: I'm not doing this, I'm not going on auditions. And
Speaker 4: I moved to New York and I started a production
Speaker 4: company in the UK because I have a British passport.
Speaker 4: He was just a regular guy. Eventually started a family,
Speaker 4: and I just lived like a normal human being with none.
Speaker 3: Of that pressure or less just from burnout. Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think I was just fried.
Speaker 4: I think that it was the early nineties and I
Speaker 4: had acting friends around me who were really like some died,
Speaker 4: like you know, it was that early. It was a
Speaker 4: tough era, early nineties for a lot like eighties like
Speaker 4: flamed a lot of people out, as we all know,
Speaker 4: so I didn't. I saw that happening around me, and
Speaker 4: I just thought, I don't feel like if I stick around,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be in the best place. So it
Speaker 4: was kind of a sort of a survival instinct. And
Speaker 4: then what's interesting is that around in the back end
Speaker 4: of the eighties, when I had all this attention on me,
Speaker 4: Like from my perspective, I wasn't someone giant star anything,
Speaker 4: but I was not an anonymous person.
Speaker 3: Sure.
Speaker 4: I found the Internet pre Web, the Internet, which was
Speaker 4: in those days quite crude, like the BBS Usenet era,
Speaker 4: where you would have an anonymous user name. You would
Speaker 4: find these groups of like minded people. Will Wheaton talks
Speaker 4: about this very eloquently, cause he's even more tech savvy
Speaker 4: than I am, and he did the same thing. He
Speaker 4: like got the hell out of the business and kind
Speaker 4: of dove into tech. And I just felt very comfortable
Speaker 4: there and I could communicate. I've made friends, would communicate
Speaker 4: eventually you knew who each other was. You know, there
Speaker 4: was trust, and you would de anonymize or whatever. And
Speaker 4: that was my interest in the birth of online communities
Speaker 4: because I had so much I got so much out
Speaker 4: of those communities, and there was even some form of
Speaker 4: online you know, for those of us who had any
Speaker 4: issues like with abuse or stuff like back in the
Speaker 4: child like there was a lot of anonymous online abuse
Speaker 4: communities almost like not group therapy, but you could just
Speaker 4: go and talk about anything. Was very free, very open.
Speaker 4: So it was an extremely liberating environment. And then I
Speaker 4: just kind of stayed with that as I re entered
Speaker 4: the and I sort of had my time away, and
Speaker 4: as I was saying to you earlier, I started training again,
Speaker 4: started working with really good acting trainers, good vocal trainers,
Speaker 4: and kind of may started to make my way back
Speaker 4: into to the business again. But it was it was
Speaker 4: a while.
Speaker 3: How many years How many years were you were away?
Speaker 4: I mean I kind of I kept working. I made
Speaker 4: another movie in like the late nineties. I was writing
Speaker 4: and directing, and I was still you know.
Speaker 3: You had a deal. You gotta tell when you did
Speaker 3: Freaks exactly.
Speaker 4: It was after Freaked that I left, though, So that
Speaker 4: was my last I didn't act between really between Freaked
Speaker 4: and Bill and Ted three almost at all professional. And
Speaker 4: I didn't audition. I wasn't part of any circuit. When
Speaker 4: they came to you for Billed three, well they didn't
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, it didn't work that way. Okay, So no,
Speaker 4: we these are all like my closest friends. We started
Speaker 4: working together in our twenties. Counta is like one of
Speaker 4: my closest friends. The two writers, Chris and Ed So
Speaker 4: we were hanging out all the time anyway, and a
Speaker 4: dozen years before we made the movie, we decided to
Speaker 4: make a third and started the very slow, laborious process
Speaker 4: of getting a script and trying to find financing, and
Speaker 4: so it was self generated, the four.
Speaker 3: Of us and you you said best friends. He the
Speaker 3: nicest gund every story in a town that wants to
Speaker 3: tear everybody down. Anytime I see his picture, I know
Speaker 3: that underneath it is going to be that he donated
Speaker 3: bone marrow to a child.
Speaker 4: Can you can you imagine how scary it is to
Speaker 4: be that person though? Where the the the media has
Speaker 4: decided you're the guy that you are literally walk on
Speaker 4: water and you're just a guy, because who isn't just
Speaker 4: a person?
Speaker 3: You one day you flip a guy?
Speaker 4: Yeah exactly.
Speaker 5: It's like in the world of iPhones, like farm He doesn't, thankfully,
Speaker 5: but like I love him to death. I've known him
Speaker 5: a really long time, but I'm just like that is
Speaker 5: like one day, I.
Speaker 3: Know, I know, oh my god, the face in the
Speaker 3: crowd or something. Oh wow, one of my favorite, one
Speaker 3: of the favorite movies ever made. Well, the movie was wonderful,
Speaker 3: thank you, I mean really wonderful, and that it wasn't judgment.
Speaker 3: It was really smart. And again I love when so
Speaker 3: many narrates his story and lets you go for the
Speaker 3: ride and then goes all right, I gave you all
Speaker 3: all I got. Yeah, you figure with anything that we
Speaker 3: didn't get that after the fact you took away from
Speaker 3: this where you went even what not that I've gotten
Speaker 3: away from this. I did the movie. I sat and
Speaker 3: watched the movie.
Speaker 4: Pull my Kids off YouTube. I mean, I you know,
Speaker 4: I think that that I think that COVID showed us
Speaker 4: there was a lot of kind of animals towards the
Speaker 4: growth of online communities, which again I know, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of bad things that go on. And to Jason's point,
Speaker 4: I've been trolled. It's horrible, right, I've been swarmed. I
Speaker 4: got Twitter sworn by like a bunch of neo Nazis
Speaker 4: on Twitter once. It was pretty bleak. But uh so
Speaker 4: I'm well aware of the pitfalls. But you know, I
Speaker 4: generally have found that that most kids are okay, and
Speaker 4: that there there's a lot of studies now they're showing
Speaker 4: that it's a pretty neutral response. Actually, their participation on
Speaker 4: social media not necessarily a given negative response. So I
Speaker 4: think that that there's a lot of benefit to being
Speaker 4: able to connect with your fellow human. This parasocial thing
Speaker 4: I was talking about that isn't a negative, right, So,
Speaker 4: and that's all just going to get more advanced, and
Speaker 4: you know, and the ability for someone in a micro
Speaker 4: nation somewhere to know what's going on and be connected
Speaker 4: to the world. I mean, I think it's an enormous good.
Speaker 3: So, by the way, to that point, you said, what
Speaker 3: was on my landing, go to YouTube? Right, and what
Speaker 3: comes up on yours? It's the porn didn't come up
Speaker 3: big time, But so what's on yours? What's on your Okay?
Speaker 1: So if you go to my YouTube home page, because
Speaker 1: I was I was going, you know, when I was
Speaker 1: hearing about all going down rabbit holes.
Speaker 3: And going nobody's giving me this step. Yeah, here's what
Speaker 3: comes up.
Speaker 1: If I go to my homepage, fail army, because I
Speaker 1: like watching people screw up.
Speaker 3: I do.
Speaker 1: I'm a curamesis so I have a lot of how
Speaker 1: to make potteries.
Speaker 3: I have Judge Judy.
Speaker 1: Clips, I have Broadway based content, I have all kinds
Speaker 1: of bloopers, America's Got Talent, highlights behind the scenes of
Speaker 1: movie making, UFO and Supernatural investigations, stand up Comedians and
Speaker 1: are Stupid?
Speaker 3: Podcast it comes up on my mind? Has mine has
Speaker 3: David Gilmour doing his Barn Music's plant Let's see here
Speaker 3: NFL Sunday Ticket. I don't know why. Joe Rogan talks
Speaker 3: to Hawk Cogan, who was about as firing from the
Speaker 3: w w F. Martin Short says that Tony O'Brien conin
Speaker 3: Bryn looks like Freeze Dride Prince Harry wam Fredkin talks
Speaker 3: about why he doesn't know how he really feels about Alpuccino,
Speaker 3: which is a good one.
Speaker 4: I actually want to.
Speaker 3: So I was surprised to see the Variety online and
Speaker 3: I got to tell you, but there was nothing there
Speaker 3: that I went there's nothing.
Speaker 4: You don't get rabbit holes. I mean that's you don't
Speaker 4: really get rabbit holed anymore. To be fair to YouTube,
Speaker 4: they fixed the recommended algorithm several years ago. It's really
Speaker 4: difficult to go on there.
Speaker 1: I was really I scrolled for a while and I went, yeah,
Speaker 1: there is nothing here that looks overtly political to me
Speaker 1: or agenda.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't. I don't get that that kind of content.
Speaker 3: I never do, but have to be.
Speaker 4: You have to be looking for that kind of stuff.
Speaker 3: I think you have to open you to open the
Speaker 3: box you do. Yeah, I do have how to cover
Speaker 3: a hickey, and I don't understand. I don't understand that one. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Like you like dad rock and Broadway musical, Yeah, I
Speaker 4: love that.
Speaker 3: You love all the musical stuf.
Speaker 4: It's amazing.
Speaker 3: Like you said, I can watch any performance of any
Speaker 3: artist that ever recorded. Yeah, and my kid can learn
Speaker 3: every solo ye that any guitarist ever played.
Speaker 4: It's just and every terrible TV commercial I was in
Speaker 4: when I was nine years old, And I mean it's all.
Speaker 4: I mean, the stuff we did on Broadway is there
Speaker 4: that no one recorded any What.
Speaker 3: Changed the world for me and I.
Speaker 1: Had it existed when I was a kid, I don't
Speaker 1: think we'd been talking right now because I would have
Speaker 1: a very different career and doubt you would never have
Speaker 1: heard of it. But I wanted to be a magician,
Speaker 1: and as a kid, The only way you could learn
Speaker 1: a trick was the other A guy shows you how
Speaker 1: to do it. But mostly it was out of books
Speaker 1: and when it was sleight of hand stuff, even the
Speaker 1: best written book, you're going, I don't know what the
Speaker 1: hell he's talking about. There are more tutorials on how
Speaker 1: to do complex To.
Speaker 3: That point, I still can't do a freaking trick that
Speaker 3: has the thread, that invisible thread to make the card
Speaker 3: rise and stuff, well, I can't even pull the thread
Speaker 3: apart to get thank you for that? Did you do magic?
Speaker 3: Two weeks?
Speaker 4: Did to hang out?
Speaker 3: I went to I went to magic camp.
Speaker 1: Oh did you That's actually where I realized this is
Speaker 1: exactly because I saw what kids were.
Speaker 3: Doing that was imagine. I went, yeah, else, by the
Speaker 3: way the curve, everybody became famous he went to magic.
Speaker 1: I couldn't tell you. I wasn't there long enough. If
Speaker 1: you did the whole thing, it was two weeks. I
Speaker 1: was there for four days, and I went, oh, I suck.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah magic. Did you have a puppet? Two? Did
Speaker 3: you do Ventrilo? Question?
Speaker 5: No?
Speaker 4: I was really into magic, the close up magic card
Speaker 4: and coin stuff, and I lived out of the out
Speaker 4: of the magic shop on.
Speaker 3: Let's go. Thank you for coming in. And by the way,
Speaker 3: I'm not just saying it really good documentary so much.
Speaker 3: It's smart. We're on there all the time. If we
Speaker 3: want to see the YouTube effect, where is it currently? Everywhere?
Speaker 4: Now it's you know, it's Amazon Apple YouTube.
Speaker 3: Which is kind of can you do you mind? Are you?
Speaker 3: Are you working on something currently?
Speaker 4: Well, I'm the Strike is you know, I'm very busy
Speaker 4: with strike stuff, with raising money for crew and we're
Speaker 4: doing all kinds of stuff coalitions and things in your
Speaker 4: head to go, Yes, I'm I'm developing a couple of
Speaker 4: other big documentary and a feature. And I did some
Speaker 4: acting that I'm not allowed to talk about this coming
Speaker 4: out next So I'm doing a lot more. I'm sort
Speaker 4: of pushing back towards acting again, and I'm looking to
Speaker 4: do theater again, which I to hear.
Speaker 1: Both of that, because aside from everything else, you're really
Speaker 1: love Yeah, thank you the actor, and you always were.
Speaker 3: I mean you you there was a reason your career
Speaker 3: took off.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 3: Can you sing anything for us? Just I wanted to ask?
Speaker 3: My trainer would be so mad. I've known you for
Speaker 3: a while, I've watched your stuff, but I can't. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine. It's like Jason when we do live shows.
Speaker 3: When I Jason comes down and sings, the audience is
Speaker 3: shocked that he can do what he shouldn't be. He's
Speaker 3: like a broad because most don't know that. Peter is shocked. Okay, Peter.
Speaker 1: The audience came going, we're gonna go see Jason Alexander.
Speaker 3: I think when they come to see a show where
Speaker 3: there's not music, it was guitar ars.
Speaker 4: I played bass for years, but I don't anymore. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: I am trying.
Speaker 3: To teach myself. We're facing me. Let's go to google
Speaker 3: him for for or what did we do? Long segment?
Speaker 3: What do we do? Right? Yes, David, Well you guys
Speaker 3: did it. I did a heck of a job. You
Speaker 3: did a heck of a job. So happened? Finish your thought?
Speaker 6: I got I got two potential things for I wanted
Speaker 6: to see what you're more interested in. Are you more
Speaker 6: interested in the top fifty videos that YouTube recommends, not
Speaker 6: necessarily the biggest videos, but the ones that are most
Speaker 6: often recommended, Or are you interested in the all time
Speaker 6: watched videos?
Speaker 2: Oh?
Speaker 4: I would vote for the ladder just because I think
Speaker 4: the former's less is kind of algorithmic. The ladder kind
Speaker 4: of tells you what people are genuinely.
Speaker 3: The lad the all time that.
Speaker 6: Let's see, I'm not going to give you too many
Speaker 6: of it. I'll give you a Pope Mari here, a
Speaker 6: lot of music videos, a lot of the let's say,
Speaker 6: we've got the Pokemon theme music. I guess people are
Speaker 6: music lovers.
Speaker 3: We also have a lot of these here. Well, I'll
Speaker 3: jump right.
Speaker 6: To the number one, because I think it's adicative of
Speaker 6: of of people's mentality.
Speaker 4: It's it's it's the baby Shark dance. That's right, yeah,
Speaker 4: Baby shark number one for a long time.
Speaker 3: Baby Shark dance.
Speaker 6: Now, guess how many guess how many views?
Speaker 3: Five hundred million. You're not even in the ballpark, man.
Speaker 4: No, it's in the billions. It would be in the villions.
Speaker 6: Go ahead, thirteen billion views, baby baby sharp.
Speaker 1: Time.
Speaker 3: So like a fortune fortune? Okay, oh my god? Who
Speaker 3: put up the baby shark man?
Speaker 4: Somebody you know who's very happy?
Speaker 3: Now? Was it a parent? Was it a company?
Speaker 4: I would have been a company, surely it would have been.
Speaker 3: Whoever, why are we wasting our time? As a guess
Speaker 3: we have when when they leave you go like this
Speaker 3: is like this is toxic.
Speaker 1: Like the guy I didn't want to emulate was the
Speaker 1: nude comic.
Speaker 3: Other than that, everybody else got it better than what's
Speaker 3: the number two video?
Speaker 6: It's called Dspatio, a Latin theme raph. It sort of
Speaker 6: a lot of fusion of different elements. It's a music video.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it shows you how global their their audience is.
Speaker 4: This is not just American people watching. There's not just
Speaker 4: people watching Western You.
Speaker 3: Got a couple more? I just throw a couple more
Speaker 3: at you.
Speaker 6: The big hits, the wheels on the bus by cocoa melon.
Speaker 3: Yes, you know.
Speaker 6: Contributed to that one melon is is hot for people
Speaker 6: that that five point four to two billion for them.
Speaker 6: Sure you also have you know, folks like Maroon five,
Speaker 6: Katie Perry and.
Speaker 3: A lot of Hey d Just for giggles.
Speaker 1: How many subscribers is there Really No Really podcast?
Speaker 3: Not enough? Not enough? YouTube? Can smile help us with
Speaker 3: that algorithm? Didn't I drive say now? Really?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: Now?
Speaker 3: Really?
Speaker 2: Well? Do you have another episode of really?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 3: Comes to a close?
Speaker 2: Oh and in case you were wondering, the oldest cat
Speaker 2: video on YouTube features two cats boxing, and it was
Speaker 2: filmed by Thomas Edison in eighteen ninety four Nope Really
Speaker 2: A hearty Really No Really. Thank you goes out to
Speaker 2: Alex Winter for joining us. His Instagram is at Alex Winter,
Speaker 2: his Facebook at Alex winter page, and at the YouTube effect.
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